Two Temple Place in London is currently presenting Lives Less Ordinary: Working-Class Britain Re-seen, an intergenerational group exhibition of over 50 British artists and art collectives, including Eric Tucker, Jasleen Kaur, Feministo! and Creative Black Country. The exhibited practices explore themes relevant to the British working class through painting, photography, installation art and more. It is on from January 25 – April 20, 2025, and is curated by independent curator Samantha Manton, who is also an exhibitions manager at UCL. Manton joins STIR for an interview to discuss the exhibition’s relationship to its lavish venue, as well as the poetics among the practices presented at the show.

The subject of working-class representation poses an intriguing and subversive tension between the exhibition and the building’s original purpose... – Samantha Manton, independent curator

Two Temple Place is a lavish Neo-Gothic mansion designed by celebrated British architect John Loughborough Pearson (1817 – 1897) for William Waldorf Astor (1848 – 1919), a wealthy American attorney and politician who moved to England in 1891 and was eventually made a viscount. The building was completed remarkably fast in 1895 and served as a home and office for Astor.

The mansion may seem like an odd choice of venue for an art exhibition dedicated to working-class identity in Britain. Manton tells STIR, “The subject of working-class representation poses an intriguing and subversive tension between the exhibition and the building’s original purpose.” She adds that the choice of venue is also meant to remind us that the grandeur of spaces such as Two Temple Place is a testament to the skill of the working classes who build these structures.

Lives Less Ordinary does not approach working classness in the United Kingdom as a monolithic identity but rather one that is pluralistic and intersectional. The practices presented at the show deal with topics such as race, gender and sexuality. Looking at Shemagh, Beard and Bling (shot 2010; printed 2021) by British photographer Mahtab Hussain, we see a young—presumably Muslim—Asian man who is fashionably dressed, with his hair styled and jewellery in his left ear. The image is part of Hussain’s series You Get Me? (2008 – 2017), which compiles portraits of working-class Asian men that the photographer encountered and had conversations with around topics such as racism and media representation. The photograph challenges notions surrounding Islam and Asian identity, both of which are typically seen as conservative and traditionalist.

Scottish-Indian artist Jasleen Kaur’s Father’s Shoes (2010) is another example of the show’s thematic intersectionalities. The artwork is composed of a pair of her father’s formal brogue shoes and a pair of his flip-flops that have been combined to become one pair of footwear. It suggests a man who works hard to support his family but may not have the capital to dress appropriately for every occasion. As Kaur put it herself in a 2016 interview with the British Council, “My dad's a proper businessman who dresses ‘improperly’, and I wanted to reflect this in something as basic as a shoe.” Father’s Shoes also paints the picture of an unmistakably Indian father: the blue straps of the flip-flops are typically found on white slippers—referred to as chappals—all across India. This particular footwear design is inextricably linked to home and comfort in the Indian subconscious.

The works being shown at Lives Less Ordinary also present an overlap of themes. For example, Manton considers the late British artist Eric Tucker (1932 – 2018) and the contemporary community-centric art collective Creative Black Country. She tells STIR, “Eric Tucker’s sense of the pub as a community hub, as expressed in his late 20th century paintings of Warrington, Cheshire, is echoed nearby in the contemporary phenomenon of ‘Desi Pubs’ in the Midlands, as celebrated by Creative Black Country in a handcrafted pub sign and related archival imagery.” Returning to Shemagh, Beard and Bling and Father’s Shoes, we see that the desire to depict human identities as multifaceted is another key concern that echoes through the practices on view.

Lives Less Ordinary is an important offering of British art that foregrounds the experiences of the working class and subverts stereotypical notions around it being passive and lacking in creativity. As the curator puts it, (the show) offers a radical reframing, bringing together works that evidence moments of comfort, joy, kinship, pride, reflection, humour and hope.

‘Lives Less Ordinary: Working-Class Britain Re-seen’ is on view at Two Temple Place from January 25 – April 20, 2025.