artists at work
In this exhibition I contemplate the ‘work’ or labour aspect of art making. What is the value or significance of the physical and laborious process that turns an idea into a finished artwork?
Birdman (detail) | oil on canvas | 80 x 54 inches | 2013 | Photo credit: Jake Paleczny
YAAW Gallery | Whitehorse | 2013
YAAW Gallery | Whitehorse | 2013
Snowcarver | oil on canvas | 84 x 54 inches | 2013 (Yukon Permanent Art Collection on display at the Yukon Arts Centre foyer)
Birdman | oil on canvas | 80 x 54 inches | 2013
Printmaker | oil on two boards | 80 x 78 inches | 2013
Printmaker (detail)
artist statement
work
1. (noun) exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something; labour; toil.
2. (verb) to do work; labour
In this exhibition I contemplate the ‘work’ or labour aspect of art making. What is the value or significance of the physical and laborious process that turns an idea into a finished artwork?
Today art is not necessarily defined in terms of an actual artwork; an artist need not physically produce a work at all. Art can be conceptual, it can be a found object, it can be a process or performance. The making of an art object can be delegated to others or produced using advanced technology.
So what does it mean for someone to adhere to a traditional practice at a time when artists are struggling to assert themselves in defiance of tradition? What is the value of investing time and effort into carefully building, documenting or transcribing something by hand when it can be captured for posterity in an instant with one’s mobile phone?
Here, I contemplate two notions. Firstly, that ideas and production are not easily separated…that they are contingent on each other so that the physical construction is not just a way of producing something that is already in one’s imagination, but rather, that ideas, in a fundamental way, grow out of the production process. And secondly, that since our labour becomes embedded in the things that we make, the resulting artwork contains within it traces of the conditions of its making. Labour in the artwork connects it to a particular time, attitude and place.
Karl Marx was the first to base his social philosophy on such ideas. In contrast to idealists who thought that societies were shaped by consciousness and abstract ideas, Marx was quite certain that it was the other way around; that the productive forces of society—how we work and what we make— determines how we think.
Marx believed that for humans, to labour is not just an activity but the very essence of our being; it is the essential, innate quality that separates us from all other species. All animals produce out of physical need, but only humans continue to produce even when all their needs have been met. And while an animal creates only in the method of its species, we can create in any way and also “form things in accordance with the laws of beauty.”
“Art is man’s expression of joy in labour.” William Morris
work
1. (noun) exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something; labour; toil.
2. (verb) to do work; labour
In this exhibition I contemplate the ‘work’ or labour aspect of art making. What is the value or significance of the physical and laborious process that turns an idea into a finished artwork?
Today art is not necessarily defined in terms of an actual artwork; an artist need not physically produce a work at all. Art can be conceptual, it can be a found object, it can be a process or performance. The making of an art object can be delegated to others or produced using advanced technology.
So what does it mean for someone to adhere to a traditional practice at a time when artists are struggling to assert themselves in defiance of tradition? What is the value of investing time and effort into carefully building, documenting or transcribing something by hand when it can be captured for posterity in an instant with one’s mobile phone?
Here, I contemplate two notions. Firstly, that ideas and production are not easily separated…that they are contingent on each other so that the physical construction is not just a way of producing something that is already in one’s imagination, but rather, that ideas, in a fundamental way, grow out of the production process. And secondly, that since our labour becomes embedded in the things that we make, the resulting artwork contains within it traces of the conditions of its making. Labour in the artwork connects it to a particular time, attitude and place.
Karl Marx was the first to base his social philosophy on such ideas. In contrast to idealists who thought that societies were shaped by consciousness and abstract ideas, Marx was quite certain that it was the other way around; that the productive forces of society—how we work and what we make— determines how we think.
Marx believed that for humans, to labour is not just an activity but the very essence of our being; it is the essential, innate quality that separates us from all other species. All animals produce out of physical need, but only humans continue to produce even when all their needs have been met. And while an animal creates only in the method of its species, we can create in any way and also “form things in accordance with the laws of beauty.”
“Art is man’s expression of joy in labour.” William Morris