DAVID Garner’s exhibition SHIFT at the Newport Art gallery examines the working class struggle by asking us, the observers, to consider the human cost of coal in the Welsh Valleys.

Evocatively, he exults the rights of ‘everyman’ to equality, fairness and dignity. This art gallery space does his work justice, which cannot be said of the elected council member who denied him and the citizens of Newport justice by banning the local press access to photograph his work. It is ironic that this bigoted, blinkered approach contradicts the beliefs of this accomplished artist and many Newport citizens ‘that everyman has their rights’. Simon Gibson, are we observing one of the many reasons Newport is declining into oblivion, an historic industrial city that has always demonstrated and raged against injustice? It beggars belief that should the Museum of Wales, Cardiff, display these exhibits it would prohibit photographic access by the local press. Cardiff expanding, Newport contracting?

We should rage against this injustice, if only by visiting this thought-provoking and professionally staged exhibition and filling the visitors’ book to overflowing with citizens’ comments at this outrage. Newport Temporary Art Exhibitions, RIP.

Joan Briggs, Ambryn Rd, New Inn