Labour of love is a sculpture work based around exploration of the role of value and women's work. It is a non-wearable pair of stockings that are embroidered with the phrases "your worth is not dependant on validation", ""arts and crafts"", "hobby", "priceless", "worthless", "$5,000" and "labour of love". I was looking at the typical devaluation of 'arts and crafts' in the fine art world as opposed to classical art like painting drawing or photography, they are often overlooked in their artistic sensibilities or dismissed as 'kitsch'. I was also exploring the idea of bonding and sewing as a pastime and so I asked my mother, who is also a sewer to help me embroider the tights - as we jointly worked on the project I formed a sort of sentimental attachment and this, for me, delves deeper into the idea of value - does it increase or decrease? And what is the role of personal value over monetary or objective value? I wanted to represent the dichotomy of not only value but also the actual act of participating in the making of textile arts through the juxtaposition of the phrasing, especially at the two bottoms of the legs - "labour of love" and "$5,000". The actual definition of a labour of love is "a task done for pleasure, not reward" and then opposing that to a direct, and substantial, monetary value. The next is the obvious distinction between pricelessness and worthlessness, again meditating on the idea of subjective and objective value. As they work up to the header phrase they become more merged like legs themselves, Hobby and arts and crafts are there to serve as a reclaiming and embracing of words that have been used to devaluate works, I think combination adds weight to each claimThe development of this work from my other one, in a roundabout way, is actually quite linear but the way I came to in my head was, frankly, much less so. I hadn’t really sorted out my ideas in my brain correctly and so I couldn't clearly think through what I wanted to do, so as per my feedback I explored two artists; Cathy Wilkes and Sarah Lucas. Both of these really got the 'cogs' turning, I really liked the ideas behind Wilkes' work and the material practice of Lucas. When I was reading up about Wilkes' I found a paper by Simon O'sullivan, "Ten concepts following Cathy Wilkes practice" one of the phrases that particularly stuck with me was "Woman is also a certain regime of signification. We might call this latter regime the domestic, which includes as a key component the maternal" and from this I realised that I wanted to involve my mother if possible. I was heavily influenced by Lucas's work in the use of stockings, I wanted to use them because for one they are an almost universal signifier for women and two, redefining them as an object as Lucas has done speaks not only to my concept of rebellion but also to value - the paradox that the stockings become unwearable yet are still a 'craft item', what does their worth lay in? I experimented a little with how I would embellish the stockings, at first I wasn't so successful, trying to dye them - it didn't take. So next I painted on them with red acrylics, I liked this because it sort of acted as a metaphor for traditional fine art - the paint, and further the red made it look like blood which for me conjures up the thought of all this hard work and unrecognised 'bloody' labour. But when I tried the embroidery I was really happy with the result and I think that embodied my ideas better. I chose to reuse my phase from the poster but added "your" not only to directly address the audience but also to give a life, so to speak, to the object it's self. The rebellion of the work is against the canonised notions of art, serving as a sort of reminder or call out to appreciate the unrecognised or possibly unacknowledged work in this media.
Simon O’Sullivan, Ten Concepts Following Cathy Wilkes’ Practice, http://www.simonosullivan.net/art-writings/cathy-wilkes.pdf
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