The complexity of class: artist Jamie Holman’s red glass and resistance
Driving into Blackburn in May, the election aftermath still spills from the airwaves, the tremors of the night before continuing to unfold as presenters attempt to narrate a country shifting beneath them. The language suddenly feels old again, full of talk of crowds, resistance, anger and nationhood, while the roads into town pass the very people being discussed in the abstract, unloading vans, waiting at bus stops, moving between shuttered shops and takeaways, reduced once again to demographic, warning sign or voting bloc depending on who is speaking.
I am heading to interview Jamie Holman about Welcome to The Imperial Coffee Company, his new release through Graham Duff’s Heaven’s Lathe label, a limited edition lathe-cut glass record built from earlier gallery work and collaboration, placing Christopher Eccleston’s voice inside a landscape of guitars, industrial memory and collective resistance. Holman, once singer, guitarist and lyricist with Tompaulin before becoming one of the North’s most distinctive contemporary artists, has spent years moving between painting, installation, sound, performance and questions of working-class culture. The record sits somewhere inside all of them while refusing to settle comfortably into any single category…
Article originally published by Northern Soul, 18 July 2026.
This is an extract from my feature on Blackburn artist Jamie Holman and Welcome to The Imperial Coffee Company, exploring art, music, class, resistance and the complicated ways working class culture is represented.