Lads Not on Tour at Barnsley Civic is going nowhere. That is to say, it is stationary, static, inward-looking – train tickets out are rolled up and tossed into a pile, mobile phones are smashed into oblivion and the re-creation of an inviting sitting room pulls me in, tells me to sit awhile. The Barnsley-born artists – or lads as they call themselves in the title – Sam Batley, Sean O’Connell, Harley Roberts and Sam Horton – talk to me of “the call of home”, “the invisible wall” and the insular nature of a town that is built on mining and the business of literally burrowing into the ground.
The group show opens in a confession booth with a toilet for a pew and a balaclava-clad mannequin for a priest. On an intense night out the toilet cubicle, with its unassuming facade, was the only space the lads felt able to be vulnerable with one another, throwing up confessions over the cubicle walls. Overhead, the voices of Batley and O’Connell read out the prayer used in the 12-step recovery programme: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change / the courage to change the things I can / and the wisdom to know the difference.”
