Joanne Coates

Joanne Coates is a working-class visual artist using the medium of photography. She lives and works across the Northeast of England.  Her work explores rurality, hidden histories, and inequalities relating to low income through photography, installations, and audio. She uses photography to question stories around power, identity, wealth, and poverty. She was first educated in working-class communities, and then at London College of Communication (BA Hons Photography). Participation and working with communities are an important aspect of her work. Coates is a farm labourer practicing active nature friendly methods, this forms an intersect with her art.  She is deeply attached to places, the memories they hold and the people who inhabit them. Her work is often made from a lived experience perspective touching on class, disability and gender.