Hard Labour
Shahin Afrassiabi | Richard Ducker | Stewart Gough | Sophie Newell | Steve Setford | Rob Voerman | Neil Zakiewicz
Curated by Richard Priestley
The importance of the work ethic in British culture implies a catholic sense of guilt, of Methodist or Quaker sobriety dictates to the way we live our daily lives. So how do non-conformists such as artists deal with their own social indoctrination whilst living an unstructured lifestyle, often hand-to-mouth due to erratic income and high living costs in London in order to maintain and pursue their practice? Hard Labour examines the underbelly of work and how objects are made, presenting objects that demonstrate labour behind their conceptual intention. Manual work, has developed through a class structure that was set in place in order to repress the 'working classes', both physically and mentally, through the nature of manual work itself leaving little mental or physical strength for free thought at the end of a day.
