Social Realism or Social Respect?

I have been reading the catalogue of the Joan Eardley Sense of Place exhibition.  It says she was classified as a social realist, as her work was of the 'kitchen sink' school.  I need to read more about what Social Realism means.  She, however, was quite dismissive of the term, more or less saying, 'I paint how I paint, classification is of no interest to me'.  Maybe this Social Realist categorisation is why I like her work - gritty, mundane, with no artificial prettifying.  I loved her drawings of children - energetic, scruffy, dirty, maybe cross-eyed, with a joie de vivre about them.

Thinking more about this, made me think about Social Mobility, which is so plugged by our Governments.  And which I think is a load of tosh.  I was at uni, as a mature student, from 2009-14.  I grew hugely as a person, because I worked hard for my degree … but it made not the slightest difference to my social position.  Neither did I want it to.  My social mobility movements had been made by my working life in a manual industry, and led to me being, by my standards, quite affluent, and able to retire at 48.  However, many of the young people on my degree course, did not study very hard, and are, at 21+, employed now in service industry jobs which they could have started at age 16.  University education which was promoted as the key to social mobility has been an expensive blind alley for many people.

I think my artwork could create a new category - Social Respect.  I am interested in what people do, that is valuable.  Not in monetary terms, but in behaviour.  I need to think more about how I want to define this.

I also thought about my sampler design.  I was thinking about the cutting remark and examples of them.  I had been envisaging lots of little stitch bits (like Tilleke Schwartz) but considered a series of simple two person outline for each time I have supported someone being treated unfairly, along with a quote.

Bhuta and me 'You are not giving him a warning without doing a fact finding"
Alex and me 'It is illegal to only downgrade female part-time staff with care responsibilities "
L and me 'You cannot be made compulsorily redundant when the job still exists'
Anita and me 'You cannot be dismissed for clerical errors when training has been refused'.

And an idea to write up tomorrow - research is sometimes more informative when it does not go right.  I went to A Modern Portrait at SNPG and my data collection was naff because I did not understand their definitions of Achievement, Celebrity, Society and New Art Movements.  So my counting was duff.  But when I reevaluated using my Value criteria, it went well.  Delve into this.