People who are much more politically savvy than me suggest that the Tory party might run in 2024 on a platform of ‘the recovery plan is working, don’t risk switching to Labour.’ The logic of that is confounding in itself, but this photo of the 1992 Tory campaign from Mark Pinder’s exhibition neatly summed up the more profound problem from a North East perspective… though of course the Tories won in 1992.

Mark Pinder is a photo journalist, and this exhibition selects from his work from Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 election win through to the present day. It has a heavy North East focus, and it is brilliant curated.

This photo of miners ending the last production shift at the Vane Tempest Colliery is positioned alongside the photo below, showing the fabrication of the head of the Angel of the North. The latter is often said to be a commemoration of the region’s mining and industrial heritage: the two photos are dated just four years apart.

There was much to enjoy in this exhibition—it’s not solely about political anger and betrayal, even if those were the bits that initially caught my eye. It’s a brilliant collection which provides real insight into the history of the North East region over the last forty years or so, and well worth a visit.

If you haven’t seen this show, then you’ve missed it: Macromancy closed yesterday at the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art. This probably therefore counts as bad blogging.