A Curatorial Review by Despina Tunberg
There is a particular kind of grief that attaches itself not to people but to places — to the pub that no longer opens, the high street that has gone quiet, the Friday night that exists now only in memory. Alan True, a contemporary pop artist working from the north of England, has made this grief the animating force of a body of work that is at once deeply personal and richly communal.
True's practice centers on two interconnected series: the 50 Jackets (and its continuation, 59 Nights…) and the Barzooka poster works. Together, they constitute what he calls a "slow trek to rediscover" — an extended act of cultural memory-keeping that elevates the vernacular to the level of museum-worthy artefact.
“What makes Alan True's practice genuinely exciting is its refusal to separate the aesthetic from the autobiographical, or the local from the universal.”
— Despina TunbergThe Jackets series is the conceptual heart of the practice. True wore 50 jackets across successive weekends during a pivotal year, each adorned with badges memorializing the artists who inspired him — musicians, filmmakers, cultural icons of the late 20th century. These jackets are then framed and mounted on Foamex board and Di-Bond alloy at a substantial scale — typically 1060 x 960 mm — transforming worn clothing into wall-hung objects that occupy a charged territory between personal relic and collective monument. The titles alone signal the depth of cultural reference at play: Working Class, Undiagnosed & A Natural Phenomenon; Light in 'The Years of Lead'; The Lost Honour of Sam Peckinpah. Each work carries layers of biographical and historical meaning that reward close reading.
True describes this process as "performative archiving that reveals the passing of time, alternative heritage and shared experiences through the lens of pop culture and social gatherings," elevating the personal to museum importance through a depth of interpretation and narration usually reserved for 'high' culture objects. This is a pointed and politically aware gesture. The work insists that a badge-covered suede jacket from a northern town carries as much cultural weight as the artefacts enshrined in national collections — and it makes a compelling case.
The influences True himself cites are instructive. He draws on the legacy of Jeremy Deller, who elevates collective memory and subcultural narratives; Joe Tilson, who integrates pop culture and personal symbolism; Jim Lambie, whose installations use everyday objects and music references to evoke shared experience; and Lucy Orta, whose wearable works connect fashion with social commentary. These are not casual name-drops. True positions himself within a recognizable lineage of socially engaged British art while maintaining a voice that is entirely his own — conversational, irreverent, and fiercely committed.
The Barzooka works operate in a different register, functioning as a kind of illustrated oral history. Barzooka was a bar on Victoria Street in Blackburn that closed its doors at the end of 2016 and True's series of gig posters, promotional prints, and written accounts constitute a loving archive of its final years. The imagery draws on the visual language of 1960s counterculture —film stills, fashion photography, the graphic economy of a photocopied flyer — and the accompanying texts read like dispatches from a lost civilization. There is genuine literary quality here: True writes about Blackburn's night-time economy with the same forensic affection that great writers have brought to the bars of Paris or New York.
True's belief in "the life-affirming qualities and community of pub and bar culture" is not mere nostalgia; it is a philosophical and emotional position, one that identifies collective sociability as a form of what he calls "mental health kevlar." This framing gives the work a seriousness that transcends sentiment.
What makes Alan True's practice genuinely exciting is its refusal to separate the aesthetic from the autobiographical, or the local from the universal. His exhibited work — including the British Textile Biennial 2023 — demonstrates a growing critical recognition of a vision that is both singular and deeply rooted in place. True is an artist worth watching, and an archive worth preserving.
Despina Tunberg Curator
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World Wide Art Books and Artavita
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