Flattery will get you … Nowhere

I took it as a slight when the posh dark haired woman who picked up a camera after a profitable career-used the exact same phrase from my exhibition on women in farming in her exhibition about women

(Trigger warning. Mention of sensitive subjects)

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Is it shite.

It’s the cultural annihilation of authentic voices by those who can, but can’t do.

Let me explain.

It costs on average £14,000 to make a photobook with a major photobook publisher. (A good proper art book) Even if you win a prize, it’s rare they’ll front that cost. A decent quality exhibition? Anywhere from £5K to £20K. Printing a full portfolio? Add that too.

Attending events, portfolio reviews, having access to materials, film, entering prizes. In the arts these are all seen as essential. Add it all to the tally and you get a picture of why there are so few working class artists around today.

Still don’t believe me? Try making it work (girl boss style) when you’ve just come back from not having a bank account, no savings, scraping by. It’s not possible. I know it happened to me in 2017. Crippled by post university debt, not able to pay off my student overdraft. Working class artists are already struggling and juggling. We live in a society which wilfully ignores class struggle and poverty.

The arts in 2025 has a sharp elbow problem. Jeremy Corbyn (Blindboy episode 28th May 2025 ) recently talked about the rise of sharp elbow politics in the 80s. This competitive, individualistic drive has filtered into the arts.

Scrolling through my phone, I saw the words and read them. And again. Those were my words. This photographer in the same region had not only used the exact same words but the exact same subject, gender and agriculture. Picking up my book I looked at the page. There it was the exact same lines. Maybe a mistake, don’t over think it, I said in my head trying to wind thoughts creeping in. A few months later they had an article published using the phrase ‘daughters of the soil’ … the exact name of the series I worked so hard to make. This was 1 year after I had success with the work, my first real proper well paid commission in the arts.

If that was a one off I might not feel imbued to write about it. (Although I am a Taurus Sun Scorpio moon it’s in my nature to not let that shit go). I’m going to share my own experiences as that is only right. Every working class artist I know has these stories. It happens more than you can imagine.

Take last summer when I was invited to work with the National trust to extend that work around gender and farming. A commercial photographer literally paid out of their own pocket to put up an exhibition outside the venue I had been asked to apply for a grant with. There’s no way I can compete. I can barely afford to get by let alone front thousands on exhibitions. Maybe a coincidence?

Or the time I spent a stupid amount of time rewriting my bio. Never feeling at ease with what to say about myself. I went to a North Yorkshire business meeting (I know🤮 but I was desperate, maybe they would fund a website who knows, shy bairns get nowt) for the business mentor to share all my ideas with the middle class young woman moved to the dales from down South, cut glass accent, even sharper elbows. A friend shared their website a few months later remarking on the similarities. It wasn’t word for word but by hell it was close. This is my bio, about my life. How can it possibly be the same. There is a double standard. Their practice is unethical but no one questions it. What their connection to these working class northern communities is, other than to make a career for themselves. No one asks.

No harm done right, better get a thicker skin. Only I don’t in fact have a thick skin, and the fact is they have the time and money (Photography is a particularly expensive art form) to do this. Class keeps you from doing those things, from affording to, from feeling like you can.

To set the record straight - everyone can make work about whatever they like, certainly no one owns a theme nor should act as though they do.  We have individual visual voices shaped by all our experiences as humans. Two people making with about the same thing can be exciting, fresh and different. In fact it can even strengthen the point of a work.

There is something that irks me. These are all middle class people who have moved to the region practicing the play of the sharp elbows. I wonder if it’s purposeful or the subconscious part of the confidence to feel you are entitled to everything, everywhere and Everyone that comes with a different class background?

These wealthy incomers are the first to tell me I don’t belong, not in the place I was born, or had to come back to after university. I feel as though we live in two different places - mine is filled with getting covered in cow shit, carefully making portraits 2 shots on a roll of 120 film because I still can’t afford to be frivolous, struggling to fit it all in, constantly late from hopping away from one job to the next stuck behind someone looking at the beautiful views going 30mph through the only road in the dale. Sometimes (albeit rarely) I don’t even want to live there it’s so hard, and gender roles in farming are so stiff. I didn’t have anywhere else to go, and I made it work. The difference is I’m not competing with you. I’m trying to survive and struggling.

There are real barriers that come with being a working class rural artist. These folks know people. They know how to play the game. In 2022 I stopped talking as much. I’ve always talked about class, university opened my mind to all these ideas. My first essay was all about class, it’s always been about class. In 2021 I had been told if I didn’t stop talking about class my career would be over. In 2022 this imitation began in earnest. I stopped sharing work, ideas. I started to isolate because it felt so violating.

I’ve held this in for so long, but when I saw that exact same sentence, not even reworded, not even a comma changed. The series about something that was my lived experience.

This wasn’t long after I’d very publicly tried to end my life—cue helicopters with body heat detectors chasing me through the woods in an East Yorkshire market town. ( Sorry, taxpayers. ) I wasn’t in a good place. I had to stay in hospital to get better.

These words may appear scathing but I’m sick of being silent. Less working class people are getting to be in the arts. Deep down I know to not blame the individual who is taking from a system that benefits them. I do wonder though… Are the sharp elbows the product of the person or the system that pits Artist against Artist? When I make these points, when I talk about class… I’m told that it sounds angry, or that it’s scary, or that it’s not fun. This hurts the most. A throwaway stereotype. I am strong but I am also soft. Passive aggressive cues are lost on me. I mean what I say and I say what I mean. The violence doesn’t come from the working class. The working class women I know are kind and giving, we don’t compete, we debate, we share. To dismiss me for daring to speak out as violent or angry is easy, it means you don’t have to listen.

Now it’s 2025, The artist that ripped off my bio, is continuing to make work about the North. I’m almost glad to say it’s not only me whose ideas they are ripping off, for sanity’s sake. They got funding for their website from North Yorkshire council and from arts council. The organisations are as much to blame as the individual. After all who would want to work with artists who don’t need much of a fee, the middle class higher ups who see something in someone like themselves - they see a polished package - far more confident and competent than someone like myself. Autistic and socially awkward, struggling to stay afloat. So tired with exhaustion I forget words. Who do you think is the better option? The more sure fire? Who do you think they want to work with.. the person who turns up tired and a bit frazzled after a milking shift or the one with polished portfolios?

Its 2025 I’ve still never owned a home. I still don’t have savings. But I do now have a bank account, and a decent credit score. you know what? That’s an achievement that no one can take from me.(apart from the banks obviously) I have a phone contract, wonderful friends and a beautiful dog. I’ve rewritten my bio… I still don’t like it and I still don’t have a new website.

Dan Evans (Welsh sociologist, writer and theorist) talks about the hatred the new petite bourgeoisie hold for the working class—I want to say it’s mutual babes. That isn’t quite true. There’s nothing in me that would want to dominate in this way.

And it’s not just that they have the means to do it—it’s that, objectively, their work isn’t even great. It’s fine. Not bad. I would even hazard to say I like it. It’s not ground breaking, culture shifting, life changing, but it is career driven work to elevate the artist career rather than the issues it claims to be about.

It is not obsession

These stories, this work—it’s my purpose. It’s what gives meaning. For me the defining factor is …I don’t do it to have a career, I do it because stories from my community and place matter. For years this has been the case middle classes taking over, taking up space that isn’t theres, winning over arts organisations.

I’ll never understand the need these supposed liberals have to smother voices from within.

I’ve always believed in togetherness. Believed we were stronger when we share. I still do.

So—is imitation really the sincerest form of flattery? Or is it just cultural suppression with a smiley well groomed face—a tactic to dominate the market?

Guess we’ll never know.

But one thing’s for sure: it didn’t bloody work. I won’t be silent anymore. There needs to be working class people telling their own stories and it needs to be now.*

*why talk about it now? It’s getting worse. A new layer is being added. Those wealthy artists are seeing class as a way in, publishers, editors, curators fall for it. This insidious culture is being encouraged by business arts courses, and levelling up funds. I went on a recent course where we were told to find artists we liked and set that as a mould, to recreate. Replicate what they have, contact who they work for. That’s a game I refuse to play. I know the saying ‘talent imitates, genius steals’ but I won’t fall for this. It’s always to those with less who they think they can do it to. There’s power in it or rather power imbalance.