In yesterday's post we mentioned William Morris and, since among the contemporary artists referencing him there is Jeremy Deller, let's have a look at the installations by this British artist included in the 56th International Art Exhibition in Venice. Deller has curated a room inside the Central Pavilion at the Giardini.
Some of the works included were actually part of the Hayward touring exhibition "All That Is Solid Melts Into Air", first shown in 2013 at the Manchester Art Gallery, among them there are for example pages of 19th century broadsides.
Concerned with heavy industries, cotton mills, railways and mining, the broadsides on display ("Five in the mornings", "Jone O' Grinfield" and "Just What We'd All Like To See", 1843-73) documented the industrial struggles, poor working conditions, strikes, accidents and disasters of those times.
In the absence of newspapers, they became ways of spreading information and featured songs that exposed the perils and dangers faced by the industrial workers, calling for education and self improvement.
The songs were a crossover between folk and popular music, with lyrics referencing work in general and the working conditions in the factories (though they weren't sung inside factories because of the noise of the machines).
These songs were paired with more sentimental verses and lyrics contrasting songs with heavier themes and tales of woe, such as the one entitled "Lines upon the Explosion at Witton, near Birmingham".
The latter, recounting a disaster at a mine, may have been used for example as a way to raise funds for victims and families, while "A prophecy for 1973" imagines the world in 100 years' time, celebrating freedom and sexual emancipation.
There are further references to songs in a jukebox surrounded by a mural evoking a furnace or the fire and brimstone of John Martin's painting "The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah" (1852).
The jukebox is loaded with forty recordings from Britain's industrial past and present, and includes noises of cotton and coal industries with the clang of machinery on the factory floor. Many of these recordings were made in the '80s, a time when factories were closing down.
Deller's reference to music and songs extends to the Arena space in the Central Pavilion where visitors can see at specific times and days the a cappella vocal performance "Broadsides and Ballads of the Industrial Revolution", with scores based on song sheets sold in the streets.
The display is completed by other works hinting at the theme of labour, such as a plastic arm with a Motorola device protruding from a wall. The device on the wrist is a Motorola WT4000, usually worn by employees in warehouses (such as Amazon's) to track the speed of orders and the efficiency of the staff. It can calculate if a worker falls behind schedule and send warning to inform them about the situation.
Next to this severed plastic limb, there are 28 photographs of unidentified female ironworkers. Dating from 1865 these photographs of anonymous women workers from Tredegar ironworks in South Wales were taken by William Clayton, a local photographer, in response to a public debate about the role of women in heavy industry and the effect it was having on domestic life.
Most of these women posed for the first time in front of a camera and the studio backdrop emphasises the class distinction between people.
The label describing the photographs also states that this could be an example of Victorian anthropology, indicating a new tribe in the making - the industrial worker.
A banner hanging from the celing completes the installation, stating: "Hello, today you have a day off" (2013; made by Ed Hall) a sentence sent as a text message to a zero hours (day labouring) contract worker telling him that his labour would not be required that day.
The installation chronicles the transition from an industrial to a post-industrial condition and from relentless working hours in factories and mines to dispossession, a condition experienced by zero hours workers.
In many ways this is a partial representation of labour as it doesn't tackle also the engagement of illegal immigrants or undocumented labour on exploitative terms and beyond the reach of protective labour laws. It would be interesting to expand the discourse to these topics and even come up with specific art projects based on the representation of exploitative labour in the fashion industry.
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