The Unsophisticated Arts

Unsophisticated art is the art of everyday life. During the 1940s Barbara Jones set about documenting this everyday art throughout Britain, visiting fairgrounds, tattoo parlours, taxidermists, houseboats, high street shops, seaside piers and amusement arcades. She befriended people who lived afloat on redundant canalways and studied the way they decorated their boats. She spent day after day in workshops where roundabouts were made, and watched in awe as these labyrinths of wire and painted wood were slotted into place at the fair. Her journey was an epic undertaking and her achievement remains groundbreaking.