Taking us from the founding of the suffragette movement in 1903 to the vast demonstrations against the Iraq war in 2003, Resistance presents us with a century of protest in Britain, of causes and gatherings and acts of defiance. A hundred years of reasons, of inequalities and wrongs and rights, of marches and riots, of peaceful sit-downs and kiss-ins, of fortitude and dissent and things kicking off. Things can get ugly. A fire bomb in the road, marbles under the horses’ hooves. Not resisting is uglier.
Resistance also presents us with 100 years of photographs. Filled with incident and detail, personal shots and anonymous press images, documentary series and photographs found in archives and culled from collections, they range from journalistic assignments to surreptitious surveillance images, pictures by famous photographers and by anonymous agency ones. Conceived by Steve McQueen and curated by Clarrie Wallis, it is a show of fractured continuities and swerving vantage points.
