The exhibition also premieres a new film of her 2013 project Cleaning Conditions. This installation places Ford Madox Brown painting’s Work 1852-65 alongside a film by Victoria Dahl and Leanne Judge which documents a two-week performance in July 2013 at Manchester Art Gallery for do it, an exhibition curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist for Manchester International Festival. A team of volunteer ‘sweepers’ from labour, living wage and immigration organisations swept the gallery floors every day, pausing at the end of the cleaning for a conversation on current conditions throughout England. An homage to her mentor, American performance artist Allan Kaprow, Lacy created a political conversation appropriate to the city at that time in response to Kaprow’s 1995 text Chores:
Sweeping the dust from the floor of a room,
Spreading the dust in another room
So it won’t be noticed
Continuing daily.
