‘Tish’: Sheffield Review

Dir: Paul Sng. UK. 2023. 90mins

Although British photographer Tish Murtha worked predominantly in black and white, her pictures paint a vivid portrait of working class life through the late 1970s and 1980s. Documenting her native Newcastle (and, later, Wales, London and Middlesborough), she provides an authentic insight into the devastating impact of unemployment and poverty. Yet, at the time of her death in 2013, she was largely unknown; indeed, her name may remain unfamiliar outside the creative communities in the UK whichhave posthumously embraced her. With his intimate documentary, fronted by Murtha’s adult daughter Ella, filmmaker Paul Sng attempts to bring her the wider appreciation she deserves.

Tish Murtha really does speak for herself through her outstanding work

The framing of a daughter exploring her mother’s life and legacy is a device Sng used to good effect in his 2021 documentary Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliche (co-directed with Poly Styrene’s daughter Celeste Bell), which won two British Independent Film Awards and toured the festival circuit. Careful handling following its debut as the opening film of Sheffield Doc/Fest may help Tish to wider attention as well, helping to make this outsider artist known at last. Modern Film will distribute in the UK/Ireland.

In the decade since Murtha’s death from a brain aneurysm the day before her 57th birthday, Ella (who also serves as executive producer) has published three books of her mother’s photographs and essays, and mhas been instrumental in getting her work exhibited in larger galleries in the UK. She now acts as a guide through Murtha’s life, speaking to siblings, friends, peers and tutors – all of whom express frustration that Murtha’s talents went unsung, citing reasons that range from the challenges of (unexpected) single motherhood to her own stubborn, independent spirit. The most damning view, however, is that the art world saw this working class artist as some kind of novelty; praising the vibrancy of her work while viewing her as too much of an outsider to consider one of their own.

The seventh child (of 10) in her family, Murtha was born in Newcastle’s South Shields before moving to a council estate in the more deprived area of Elswick. Finding a camera in an abandoned house, she developed a love of photography which eventually led her to enrol on the newly-created documentary photography course at Newport College. (In one of many colourful anecdotes, course founder David Horn recalls that, when he asked Murtha why she wanted to study photography, she responded that she “wanted to take pictures of policemen kicking children.”) Indeed, Murtha felt compelled to use her talent to draw attention to the realities of working class life under Thatcher’s Britain. There’s an intimacy and poignancy to her work, but also a palpable defiance.

Sng rightly foregrounds a procession of these photographs, set against the memories of those who were there or Murtha’s own letters, diary entries and essays, read in voiceover by actress Maxine Peak. In these, she railed against political shortsightedness and, particularly, Thatcher’s discriminatory policies, such as the ill-fated Youth Training Scheme, which forced legions of young people into low-paid, menial jobs. Music is particularly well used throughout, with composer Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres’s score careful to chime with lived memories of these experiences — the joy of childhood, for example, or the pride of the LGBTQ+ community Murtha documented in 1980s London — rather than the the perpetually doleful chords of the poverty on display.

Against Murtha’s photographs and the colourful memories of those who knew her, Sng’s short dramatised vignettes, in which we see a long-haired woman hanging photographs, drinking coffee and smoking in a 1970s flat, feel somewhat arbitrary; space-fillers, where none was needed. Through her outstanding work, Tish Murtha really does speak for herself.