Billy & Kes Print – KES 50

Description

This print was created to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Barry Hines’s novel ‘A Kestrel for a Knave’ published in 1968 and the subsequent film ‘Kes’ directed by Ken Loach and released in 1969.

The artwork is inspired by Billy’s passion for flying Kes (Billy’s name for the bird) it represents the moment of freedom for both of them when Billy swings his lure and Kes soars and swoops, a perfect metaphor for freedom and refuge from a life of neglect and abuse . These moments are described as being in a ‘pocket of silence’, the coloured circle represents being in their own world where no one can hurt them.

Hines was the quintessential working-class writer from Barnsley. He was a man who wrote from the margins, and unflinchingly chronicled the social injustices he witnessed: from the failure of the education system and lack of opportunity found in A Kestrel for a Knave and the examination of land ownership and alienated labour in The Gamekeeper, to the devastating effect that Thatcherism had on Sheffield in Looks and Smiles and the increasingly toxic climate of nuclear threat during the 1980s in Threads.

The artwork is also featured in ‘Untameable’, a book and exhibition for ‘Festival of the Mind’ by artists Patrick Murphy and Anton Want, inspired by Barry Hines’s work and the contents of his archive held at The University of Sheffield.

The book showcases Hines’s dogged determination over three decades to write about the changing personal and political landscapes of working-class life in South Yorkshire. The book visually explores and reinterprets these landscapes and key themes from his work.