Manchester Art Gallery

What does work mean to you?

We’ve been working together online during lock-down to re-imagine Gallery 7 around the theme of ‘Work’. In response to the Covid-19 crisis and as people return to their jobs we are questioning the return of ‘business as usual’. The crisis has revealed the underlying unfairness of an economic system that only really works for the very few, following years of austerity and under-investment in public services that made people’s lives more precarious already. Our key workers are needed now more than ever but are often some of the lowest paid, most vulnerable workers in society.

We are working with artist Suzanne Lacy on a project called Uncertain Futures, co-researching with a group of older women of colour what has been revealed by Covid-19 and re-visiting a work by Lacy from 2013 called Cleaning Conditions, which will be on display soon. We’ve started the change by purchasing Craig Oldham’s poster Key Workers for the publicly-owned collection and displayed it in Gallery 7 along with a selection of work related art to begin exploring questions about Work in the past, present and future. We invite you to join in and ask the same questions with us.

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Images

Craig Oldham Key Workers 2020

William Clayton Tredegar Iron Works 1865

Porter Mug 1820

Ford Madox Brown Work 1852-65

Emma Price Mike II 2015

Dame Barbara Hepworth Theatre Group No.3 1947

Jason Taylor Scrub Together Bench 2003

Auxiliary Air Force Uniform 1943