How does the art world invite, or restrict, the expression of working-class identity? What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a “fugitive” from the mainstream? How might you make art outside “the system”?
The final instalment of our Curating Class series is a live recording of a panel discussion featuring six of the artists who exhibited in ‘[uz], [uz], [uz]: Artists from Working-Class Backgrounds’ in The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery.
Curator Dr Laura Claveria chairs a panel comprising Simeon Barclay, Kedisha Coakley, Will Hughes, Sam Metz, Beth Smith and Bethany Stead.
They tell us how they came to art and how class has shaped and informed their lives and work; how it’s dealt with or subverted in their art - if at all. They speak from experience about how class intersects with race, culture, queerness and neurodivergence.
Co-produced by University of Leeds Cultural Collections & Galleries and the Working-Class British Art Network.
Recorded by Matthew Harrup at stage@leeds, University of Leeds, 19 March 2026.
Image: Beth Smith, Comfort Food (1990), Pastel on paper © Beth Smith. Cultural Collections and Galleries, University of Leeds Libraries, Art Collection.
Biographies
Born in Huddersfield, Simeon Barclay spent his formative years during the 90s employed as a machine operative whilst being devoted to the transformative potential of clubs, music, fashion and youth culture movements across the UK. Channelling those alternative modes of expression, he would later attend night school before taking up a place at art college, graduating in 2014 with an MFA from Goldsmiths College. Barclay is the recent recipient of the Kenneth Armitage Sculpture Fellowship; also received the Roberts Institute of Art, Practising Performance Commission; the Ares Art Award, and was included in the Hayward Gallery touring exhibition British Art Show 9. Shortly after this recording, his nomination for the 2026 Turner Prize was announced. Barclay lives and works in West Yorkshire and London.
Kedisha Coakley is a British-Caribbean artist whose practice spans sculpture, printmaking, archival research, and community engagement. Her work challenges inherited interpretations of history, inviting viewers to reconsider social and cultural narratives from alternative perspectives. Rooted in reflections on selfhood, childhood memory, and personal ritual, Coakley’s practice engages cultural history and material memory to reframe African-Caribbean presence within British narratives. She examines the afterlives of colonialism through objects that carry historical and emotional weight, using materially transformative processes such as casting, imprinting, cyanotype, collagraph, and metalwork. Alongside her artistic practice, Coakley works as a Collections Assistant at The Hepworth Wakefield, where she catalogues and archives the Ronald Moody Trust Gift.
