WORKED: ARTIST LABOR RELATIONS
curated by Grace Clark
part of A.P.E.'s guest curator program
"Worked: Artist Labor Relations"
Curated by Grace Clark
August 10 - September 3, 2022
Artists' Reception: Friday, August 12: 5-8 pm
A.P.E. GALLERY is pleased to announce "Worked: Artist Labor Relations", an exhibition of 7 innovative artists working in painting, printmaking, video, performance, sculpture, installation, social practice, and combined media. Artists highlighted include Ash Strazzinski, Eeshita Kapadiya, Ella Weber, Roz Crews, Sarah LaPonte, Thunder Miller, and kelli rae adams. Worked is
curated by A.P.E.’s inaugural guest curator, artist Grace Clark.
No tickets are necessary for this free exhibition. All are welcome.
Artists often have a unique relationship with work, as they, themselves, have the privilege of determining the labor that consequently makes up
their practice. However, many artists’ practices can be heavily influenced by the financial need to work additional full-time jobs. How do artists lean into
balancing this obligation and desire? By making their day job the inspiration for their art, using their practice as a platform for discussion, or simply saying, “I can’t”? Worked explores how artists respond to their relationship with labor––through critical discourse, radical rest, and intentional play––to consider the many shapes that labor can take.
Labor structures have a deep history of exploitation, censorship, and disproportionately allocating creative resources, especially within marginalized communities. Worked aims to share the thoughts, actions, and feelings of a variety of arts workers, especially in communities highly susceptible to this including people of color, femmes, poor, disabled, queer and trans folx.
Grace Clark is an artist, educator, and arts worker. She has been employed in numerous art world and non-art world settings including galleries, museums, schools, artist studios, non- profits, freelance photography, retail, the food industry, and more––all while maintaining her own creative practice. After becoming injured from overwork on a museum job, a condition that left her unable to use her arm to make art for herself or hold down a full-time job for an entire year, Clark experienced a transformative identity shift in conjunction with an extreme change in her relationship with work, her trust in the structures that distribute labor, and her own ability to care for herself. As her body still feels lingering tensions from the past, Clark is continuing to learn
about her personal relationship with labor through the help of others, especially the artistscourageously and thoughtfully sharing their experiences in this exhibition.
This exhibition is part of A.P.E.'s Guest Curator Program and is supported in part by a grant from the Art Angels, through the Community Foundation of Western Mass.
Curated by Grace Clark
August 10 - September 3, 2022
Artists' Reception: Friday, August 12: 5-8 pm
A.P.E. GALLERY is pleased to announce "Worked: Artist Labor Relations", an exhibition of 7 innovative artists working in painting, printmaking, video, performance, sculpture, installation, social practice, and combined media. Artists highlighted include Ash Strazzinski, Eeshita Kapadiya, Ella Weber, Roz Crews, Sarah LaPonte, Thunder Miller, and kelli rae adams. Worked is
curated by A.P.E.’s inaugural guest curator, artist Grace Clark.
No tickets are necessary for this free exhibition. All are welcome.
Artists often have a unique relationship with work, as they, themselves, have the privilege of determining the labor that consequently makes up
their practice. However, many artists’ practices can be heavily influenced by the financial need to work additional full-time jobs. How do artists lean into
balancing this obligation and desire? By making their day job the inspiration for their art, using their practice as a platform for discussion, or simply saying, “I can’t”? Worked explores how artists respond to their relationship with labor––through critical discourse, radical rest, and intentional play––to consider the many shapes that labor can take.
Labor structures have a deep history of exploitation, censorship, and disproportionately allocating creative resources, especially within marginalized communities. Worked aims to share the thoughts, actions, and feelings of a variety of arts workers, especially in communities highly susceptible to this including people of color, femmes, poor, disabled, queer and trans folx.
Grace Clark is an artist, educator, and arts worker. She has been employed in numerous art world and non-art world settings including galleries, museums, schools, artist studios, non- profits, freelance photography, retail, the food industry, and more––all while maintaining her own creative practice. After becoming injured from overwork on a museum job, a condition that left her unable to use her arm to make art for herself or hold down a full-time job for an entire year, Clark experienced a transformative identity shift in conjunction with an extreme change in her relationship with work, her trust in the structures that distribute labor, and her own ability to care for herself. As her body still feels lingering tensions from the past, Clark is continuing to learn
about her personal relationship with labor through the help of others, especially the artistscourageously and thoughtfully sharing their experiences in this exhibition.
This exhibition is part of A.P.E.'s Guest Curator Program and is supported in part by a grant from the Art Angels, through the Community Foundation of Western Mass.
