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That evening, on the news and in the local paper, the outrage over a Primark supplier , TNS was headline news. A hidden camera had recorded the underpaid workers in a Manchester knitwear factory. The footage was reminiscent of Jo’s film purely becuas eit was shot in a factory, but of course totally different in style and purpose. In Jo’s film, the workers themselves had total knowledge and control about their involvement. The purpose was transparent and the final HD film is of high quality, as opposed to the fuzzy hidden camera on the TV and I wondered if managers at the factory Jo had visited would ever trust someone with a camera again. I remembered Jo saying that everyone in the factory was very friendly and enjoyed their work, laughing and joking together about the head cams and pleased to be involved. It’s a reminder of just how strong visual images are – how the style of filming can affect the meaning. Jo aimed to honour the work of those participants, focusing on the rhythm of the working routine, she never set out to criticise working practices. Any physical or environmental problems with the jobs the workers do would be there to be seen. In the news footage, the financial realities behind the scenes in another factory is what was revealed by the journalist.
being a film that took at its starting point the economic regeneration the city, via the learning Skills and Employment voluntary networks – it seems that Jo used the factory to stand for something much wider in terms of movement, space, time and patterns of work in which we are all implicated. In fact, we cant look at the suffering of low paid factory work, without looking at the lifestyle choices we all make daily.
Art and News
To get there, you drive along the Alan Turing Way, passing B of The Bang, which is currently incomplete. Its big spikes are cut down in many cases because they dropped off!, just stumps now. But its always in your sight as you drive along that road – art for drivers.
At the Waterloo, its always frenetic – certainly for the managers and technical folk there. Mr Gurnam Singh is such an enthusiastic and helpful person and is right into the idea of artists getting involved in his centre. Phil, the technical manager had put the tv screen up in the small foyer, next to an enormous, but empty soft drink machine, again under florescent light. He’d hidden the dvd machine by hiding it under the drinks dispenser. We put Jo Lewington’s film in and all was working. Immediately several people gathered to watch the film. It shows the working process within a textile manufacturer. Jo got each worker to spend a few minutes wearing the head camera, so we see their movements and actions from their own point of view. People at the centre recognised the machines shown and named the work being done. They began to reminisce about the type of work that each of them had once done and the machines that are now used in the centre to train up people in different skills.
contemporary art in a community setting
Simon brought the Grennan and Sperandio paintings to hang at the Angels. The paintings show significant sites around the geographic areas of the city. They had been identified by CN4M workers as “hot-spots” of CN4M activity. The artists took that information and visited the sites, to try to feel what the places were like. So the paintings are based on their own subjective response. Next they made images, manipulated these to reflect their responses and then sent these to be turned into oil paintings by renderers – those technicians who spend their whole time reproducing the images of others in paint. So the application of the paint bears no relation to the feelings – the image is everything – the painting is simply a way of producing it.
I’d already seen the work in reproduction – on j.pegs – but this was my first encounter with the actual paintings. They surprised me in scale, and the richness of the oil paint. Despite the apparent distance of the artists from their production, the paintings had a warmth about them. The hanging in the centre was also surprising. They looked just right with the faulty flouresent lights, the tables, safety information and the hat stand.
Simon and I kept missing each other as I pulled into the car park, he pulled out. I had to dash over to The Waterloo Centre at the appointed time as I know how mad busy they are.
One Day To Go…..
Finally, all the work is now being installed at the various community based venues!
I am getting to see everything first of course as I fly from place to place with the notices and small boards with information, and the self-inking rubber stamps! People can get their map/guides stamped on their way round the exhibition and then win a prize (Sue Robinson's idea)
I managed to bag a bargain TV screen in the January sales for Jo’s work – she’s still somewhere in India, so I’ve had to make decisions about how her work is seen. Anyway, the staff at The Waterloo Centre were brilliant and obviously know their home entertainment technology.
These incongruous settings for the viewing of these art works raises the question of how well this is going to work aesthetically. Obviously you don’t have the same control over things like lighting, distracting backgrounds, artex walls, incidental furniture etc as one might in a gallery situation. But this is all part of the wider picture! Whilst some might worry about the flickering fluorescent light over the Grennan and Sperandio paintings, for me and the artists its just adding another layer to the experience of understanding the work. These contexts are part of the work of the overall exhibition.
The contrast later on; seeing the work in the gallery, will complete the circle of the experience, hopefully leaving everyone with some new experiences. The work isn’t site specific though – that’s part of the curating – deciding where it will be shown involved not only decisions about how the work fitted the place or the space but also overall how the journey through the exhibition tells a story about regeneration .
At the Waterloo Centre, the staff immediately were familiar with the subject matter of Jo’s film and happily talked away about the various machines and their own experiences of working in factories.
Just off to the Town Hall now to help Hafsah Naib black out some windows for her TV installation – of course they wont let us use their ladders – health and safety, so having to take our own, which are probably less safe anyway…….
Its already November and lots has happened recently but I have been a bit slack writing it up on this blog. I juggle this project with several others that I work on and time management and brain capacity sometimes let me down! I often wonder what people did before they sat in front of computers all day – its not that long ago.
Lots of meetings with the artists as work develops, lots of visits to venues, endless e.mails and wrangling over budgets and so on…
There are video installations, film, sculptural installations, painting, photographic work and a board game to coordinate..
The dates for the exhibition “I don’t know about Community Networks but I know what I like” are now set for January – each artist has their community based venue alloted, publicity is underway, being designed by UHC in Manchester. Then a good friend offered to make the website, for which there was no budget at all!! – so you can view on www.one-and-all.org to find out all the details about the project.
In past projects I’ve had to do everything, including designing leaflets and invitations myself – usually learning the software at the same time. This time I have the luxury of handing it over to someone who knows what they’re doing! Nevertheless there is a lot of work to do writing text, proof reading and gathering information from the 7 different venues. We also worked out a transport route around the venues with the Transport Network of CN4M.
Hopefully travelling around the city to these various places – from converted schools to high profile regeneration projects – gives the viewer a sense of how the regeneration industry works and to the people who use the centres the art work will be interesting and stimulate some sort of debate, and create awareness about the other places taking part.
The first stage of the exhibition will be for 2 weeks in January and then later in April there will be a show including all the work at Castlefield Gallery, which is great because I’ve always seen the work being shown in a gallery situation and the curators there have been really supportive of the concept – showing the work in the community venues is a bit of an experiment – part of the working process of development of the exhibition.
I am keen to create cross-overs between the different realms and challenge the different constituents of those realms.
