Joanne Coates

Joanne Coates (UK) is a working-class visual artist, photographer and farm labourer living and working across the Yorkshire Dales and Northeast England. Using photography, installation and audio, her work explores rural life, hidden histories and inequalities connected to class, low income, gender and disability.

Deeply attached to places, the memories they hold and the people who inhabit them, Joanne often creates work from a lived-experience perspective. Through photography, she questions established stories around power, identity, wealth and poverty while drawing attention to voices and experiences that have often been overlooked. Participation and collaboration are central to her practice, with many of her projects developed alongside rural and working-class communities.

Joanne’s work as a farm labourer, using nature-friendly farming methods, intersects closely with her artistic practice and gives her a direct relationship with the land, labour and communities she explores. Projects including Daughters of the Soil, examining the role of women in agriculture, and North Sea Swells, documenting fishing communities in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, reflect her long-term interest in rural work, representation and belonging.

Her work has received recognition including the Jerwood/Photoworks Award and the Baltic Vasseur Artist Award. Through her photography, community projects and work with Roova Arts, Joanne continues to challenge inequalities within culture while creating space for working-class and rural voices to be seen, heard and represented.