Review by Frank Plowright

Artist Myfanwy Tristram has long been involved in protests. She grew up in a household where one didn’t just moan about what was happening, one did something about it, and was taken to her first protest by her mother when still a toddler. Noisy Valley is an anecdotal history of social protest, primarily in England and Wales over assorted matters, encompassing recent changes in the law as governments have increasingly tired to restrict public protest. However, the subtitle also has meaning as Tristram’s speciality is documenting protest in artistic forms.

Tristram lives in Wales, a separate state within the United Kingdom with its own parliament, yet much power is still held by the UK government, which doesn’t greatly care for areas outside England, or indeed communities further than a hundred miles from London. She involves protests local to Wales and broader events uniting people across the UK. What the succession of personal experiences bring out is that while protests don’t always work, they can, and this is from small scale single person protests at school to massive organised events. What’s also abundantly clear is that protests attract attention, and neither authorities nor companies like negative attention.

Personal experiences cover protests from the 1960s onward, encompassing matters such as nuclear missiles, striking miners and landfill sites, right up to the present day marches about Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza. They further pass on both some remarkable stories and information that might not be obvious, such the type of picture pretty well guaranteed to land in a newspaper.

It’s a photographer who reveals that, and the title’s double meaning also encompasses needlework, illustrations and the recollections of a poet about the use of song. Tristram’s own art is richly detailed ensuring people are implanted in their environments, be that a sparse police cell, their living room or Greenham Common. Every set of recollections is accompanied by a portrait exuding personality, but, strangely, the brightly coloured pages aren’t as effective as those in purple and white.

Anyone inclined to question the motives of authority is going to find Noisy Valley a stirring repository of valuable memories, a useful source of information, and reminder that if no-one stands up our way of life will keep being eroded.