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From: A. Spade
Category: Exhibitions
Date: 08 March 2001
As the handout explains this show explores "the relationship between artmaking and 'real' work". Yee...ees - a garden shed, some drawings of machine parts, a quilt, a pile of cloth form part of this anodyne collection. I read on: "The mostly handmade objects and physical, task-oriented actions featured are equally driven by an attachment to the meditative, ritual aspect of manual labour and the patience it requires." Oh dear, here writes someone whom I suspect has done very little manual boring repetitive work. I am always suspicious of the mythologizing of labour. Sadly the show reflects the dull repetitive nature of much manual labour especially housework - the garden shed by Takahashi was less interesting than my own garden shed, the quilt was merely repetitive. "Ukeles should be locked up" wrote a Penzance art lover in the visitors book. Well that seems a bit harsh. Her pictures detailing a child putting on a coat and boots did evoke a feeling of ennui but surely not locking up. Unfortunately, I cannot provide a more detailed description of the rest of this show as our party, containing two children, was followed around by the gallery assitant even though we had been told by him that the children MUST NOT touch anything and having assured him that they WOULD NOT be touching anything. It was rather like being in one of those smart clothes shops where the assitant breathes down ones back and flicks the hangers back into place and removes some imagined dust. We were even followed upstairs by this zealot. When I read the vistitors book he seemed sure I was going to nick it, so close did he follow. I was going to buy the catalogue but left instead to walk on the beach. I expect Mierle Ukeles, that old radical feminist, would have had a bit of a laugh at the gallery's attitude to our rather shabby party of women and children
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