Anthology of Rural Life / Farmers of the Lizard. Kestle Barton Gallery

The Anthology of Rural Life is a project that provides a comparative visual study of the continuities and differences in patterns of life within contemporary rural areas. These in turn reflect shifting economic, social and cultural forces occurring in diverse European contexts. In the summer of 2024, an exhibition of the Anthology of Rural Life will be held at Kestle Barton Gallery in Cornwall (UK). This will include images made in locations across Europe alongside recent work focusing on farming life made on the Lizard Peninsula. The exhibition aims to develop a narrative around shifts in rural life, and some of the complexities currently facing the countryside. It also provides a recognition of the central place that farming continues to play in the social and economic landscape of the Lizard:

‘Robins and Udy’s project overlaps with disciplines of photographic anthropology, cultural geography and rural sociology. Their work can be situated more specifically within a distinguished history of comparable photographic projects that combine the visual language of artistic practice with the remit of an investigative survey. They describe what they do as ‘gently mapping’ a place and its inhabitants. The result avoids agrarian romanticism and rural heroism. Rather, it provides an understated, descriptive emphasis on individuals and specific sites’. (Martin Barnes, Senior Curator of Photography, Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

The complete Anthology of Rural Life project will be archived at Kresen Kernow as a social and historical document.