The Exiles, Billy Dosanjh

Dayshift, from The Exiles: back garden of a terraced street, the sky dark and burning, a group of young men present but distant from each other. A man stirs a pot on a gas fire, an outhouse holds a singer and a drunk, a black and white cartoon flickers on a TV through a window. — **Dayshift** · 2019 · 135 × 110 cm (framed) · Giclée on Hahnemühle Photo Rag · Arts Council Collection. RBSA Photography Exhibition First Prize, 2023.
Shot from a height along a row of terraced houses at the Black Country Living Museum, Dayshift offers a voyeur’s view into the many stories playing out in adjacent back rooms and gardens. Dosanjh has described these images as ‘single shot movies’. Traceable to the narrated stories of Year Zero: the young South Asian dandy’s furtive romance with a young white woman; two visibly nervous, turbaned figures on the verge of beheading a swan, a local anecdote about two men who did not realise swans were protected and would behead them to sell on the market; or the man lurking at the back with a bottle of Dr John Collis Browne’s cough mixture, repurposed by immigrant communities to combat depression and loneliness. In the top left window, a newspaper reports the moon landing, timestamping the scene.

The Exiles is a series of five large-format photographic tableaux made between 2019 and 2023. Each image draws on local folklore, archival research, and family testimony, recreating scenes from the 1960s and 70s when male economic migrants arrived in Sandwell, in the Black Country, in the last throes of its industrial might.

The work uses the principles of cinema: large-scale lighting, set builds, casting, costume, and cinematic reference, applied to make a single still image. Each tableau is composed in post from hundreds of source files. The first, Dayshift, was made in 2019 as what was, in principle, a single-shot film. The remainder of the series was made in 2022 after the lockdown pause.

Dayshift is held in the Arts Council Collection. Seamstress and Furnacemen were acquired by the Contemporary Art Society and placed at The New Art Gallery Walsall. Seamstress won the GMC Trust First Prize at the RBSA Photography Exhibition in 2023. The title is borrowed from Kent Mackenzie's 1961 docu-drama of the same name, which followed a group of young Native Americans who had left reservation life to live in Bunker Hill, Los Angeles.

Seamstress, from The Exiles: a woman alone in a darkened sewing factory under a single fluorescent strip, an image of Guru Nanak in the foreground. — **Seamstress** · 2023 · 135 × 110 cm (framed) · Contemporary Art Society
Ghinda stands alone in a darkened industrial workshop surrounded by sewing machines and hanging fabric, lit by a single fluorescent strip. She wears the clothes and earrings her late mother wore when she worked in the sewing factory, psychologically entering her ancestral memory. She pauses, caught in a moment with an image of the Guru. The image was shot in a sewing factory on its last legs, where much of the staff have worked for over 40 years.

Furnacemen, from The Exiles: a furnace shed at night, a foreman gesturing from a platform to exhausted workers below. — **Furnacemen** · 2023 · 135 × 110 cm (framed) · Contemporary Art Society
Workers gathered beneath the open roof of an industrial shed, away from the heat of the furnace. The white foreman speaks to the newly arrived workers, who don't understand a word. This image stemmed from anecdotes that during ballots, the white union leader gave persuasive speeches to English speakers while the translator would simply say 'follow him' with no explanation.

The Bridge, from The Exiles: a canal near Galton Bridge in Smethwick at night, a barge in the distance, three young men on the far bank. — **The Bridge** · 2023 · 135 × 110 cm (framed)
A canal near Galton Bridge in Smethwick at night. A barge moves through the distance, its light reflected in the water. On the far bank, three young men stand together, their white shirts catching what little light there is. Have they been up all night? Are they walking home from work? In the distance, a mysterious item of clothing lies on the bank: a woman's shawl. There has been an incident.

Payday, from The Exiles: a red-lit pub interior, men passing money between them in the Cooth ritual. — **Payday** · 2023 · 135 × 110 cm (framed)
A pub interior bathed in red light, the colour of sex, blood, and guilt. Men look the part despite being practically penniless. At the centre table, men place money down as if it is everything they have. At first glance, it looks like gambling. It is actually a ritual of loaning money called Cooth: the banks did not give loans to newcomers, so this is how they built futures together. A white woman helps two men with documents at the bar, perhaps one of their wives. One man stands apart, looking forlorn. Is he homesick? Has his mother died, thousands of miles away?

The Exiles

The Making of The Exiles