Collection: Conrad Atkinson

Conrad Atkinson (born 1940) is a British artist whose work from the early 1970s onwards used the formats of documentary evidence — photographs, newspaper cuttings, official documents, statistics and text — to address labour conditions, industrial injury, political conflict and class. His 1974 exhibition Strike at Brannans, made in response to a dispute at a Cumbrian factory, was among the earliest works in Britain to bring trade union politics directly into a gallery context. Atkinson’s practice consistently tested the boundary between art and political documentation, and his work was shown internationally at a moment when socially engaged conceptual practice was being debated across Europe and North America.