For #Five2Watch this week we've selected five artists who have reflected on forms of labour as part of their practice: Aideen Doran, Clare Smith, Jane Stobart, Lucy Stevens and Adam Burton
Good Luck, All Workers (Best Wishes to All Workers), 2013
Hand-painted sign in English and Bangla.
Stitched Time (hands at work), 2014
'Stitched Time' a video which shows the practised rhythmical movements of hands at work, stitching.
Whitechapel Founder II, 2021
One of my post Whitechapel Bell Foundry (closed in 2017) prints, using lift ground, spit bite and aquatint. Created from an old drawing that was made at the Foundry when I was artist-in-residence there.
The Workforce Symphony, 2017
Working in collaboration with g8 artists to respond to the theme of Leicester’s industry, both past and present. The new commissioned artworks have been made in response to collections of historic objects and museum artefacts as part of a group exhibition in the new galleries, at Attenborough Arts Centre, 9 June – 20 August 2017.
The new soundscape The Workforce Symphony has been produced using a mixture of field recordings, interviews and oral history archives to produce a narrative that explores the rhythmic sounds created by industrial machinery, the patterns of voices recounting stories and the natural environment. The composition is layered with sound recordings gathered from factories, workshops, vintage industrial machinery, parks, wildlife and interviews with retired industrialists and manipulated to mimic the sounds of industry or stretched, repeated and reversed to produce new and unexpected audio samples.
The exhibition is supported by Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester and Leicestershire & Museum Services, Arts Council England, Heritage Lottery Fund and Leicester City Council.
With thanks to Abbey Pumping Station, Leicestershire Industrial History Society, Men in Sheds at Age UK Leicestershire and Rutland, Cooke Optics Limited, Abbey Park and the East Midlands Oral History Archive, University of Leicester.
I used to think that Labour meant..., 2007
A letterpress print of text on found paper. The writing says 'WORK WORKING WORKERS.' which has something to do with my understanding of the word Labour in the context of The Labour Party. This is printed onto a sheet of white paper torn from a big sketchpad. There is a follow-up piece to this work titled 'But now I know that it means...', that is a letterpress print of the word 'NOTHING'.
Published 11 August 2022
