Alan Lodge: Common Grounds – Counterculture & Confrontation since 1976

This autumn, Bonington Gallery will present the first major survey of photographer Alan Lodge, one of the UK’s most important chroniclers of alternative culture, protest movements, and grassroots activism. About Spanning five decades, the exhibition brings together work documenting travelling communities, free festivals, rave culture, environmental campaigns, and anti-war protests. As a member of a travelling community for many years, Lodge offers a rare insider perspective into the people, places, and subcultures that emerged beyond mainstream society, exploring how they have shaped Britain’s social and cultural landscape over the last 50 years. Celebrating a life dedicated to activism, the exhibition traces Lodge's journey from the free festival movement of the 1970s, to cultural celebrations and headline-making events, reflecting on the changing relationship between citizenship, protest, environmental concern, public space and state authority. After a brief career as an emergency paramedic in the London Ambulance Service, Alan “Tash” Lodge took up photography and documented the emerging free festival movement in the late 1970s. In 1985, Lodge and his family joined the Peace Convoy on its annual journey to Stonehenge, where he was involved with, and photographed, the clashes between the police and travellers in what became known as the Battle of the Beanfield, resulting in one of the most violent mass arrests in British history. In 1990, Lodge moved to Nottingham to study photography at Trent Polytechnic (now Nottingham Trent University), where he became involved with the city’s influential music collective DiY Sound System, which held free parties across the UK. Among his most celebrated images are those capturing partygoers at Castlemorton Common in Wiltshire, widely regarded as the largest illegal rave in British history, which led to the introduction of the Criminal Justice Act in 1994. In recent years Lodge has continued to extensively document his involvement and attendance of public demonstrations and festivals, and is active in various welfare and advice agencies, including Festival Welfare. Featuring around 100 photographs alongside 35mm slide projections, moving image, personal archives and previously unseen material, the exhibition traces Lodge’s extensive career. Also presented will be legal correspondence and documentation relating to his own encounters and legislative actions with the police and authorities, highlighting questions around civil liberties, surveillance and the rights of photographers in public spaces. Read more Toggle Photography