Exhibition of Flock at 3rd Floor Gallery

An exhibition of the work Flock and a public event / lecture at 3rd Floor Gallery, Cardiff

Made over the five final years in the life of Hereford’s inner-city livestock market, Grant’s series takes the viewer inside the humdrum reality of a place in which people of all ages bustle and hustle for space against a backdrop of metal cages and poultry for sale. For the most part, individuals look bored and disinterested (for those about to bid, perhaps a tactic to keep down the prices), but there are almost surreal moments too. In one image, Grant captures the moment ducklings are held unceremoniously aloft: it’s perhaps the only time these creatures will experience being anything like airborne. Everything about the market looks battered and careworn. No surprise really as until it moved premises in 2011, it had served the city and the wider farming community for over 150 years. FLOCK captures something of how it feels to be at the end of an era when nobody feels happy about the change. The look of resignation on so many faces and the story of the last years of ‘the last inner-city livestock market in Britain’ can be seen to say something about the state of contemporary British farming. The ‘flock’ of famers and breeders who have for centuries fed the nation, are finding it increasingly difficult to continue: subsidies are necessary for survival and they are being squeezed; farms and markets continue to close.