Work, 2010Jess Blandford (2010)
Mixed Media
Series of 8 framed prints/paintings, each 32.5cm x 42.5cm.
Installed at 'Q-Art Presents II (work in progress)'.
A group show at APT Gallery, Deptford
18-28 November 2010.
This is a series of prints from advertisements for office furniture from 1960s interior magazines that I have been collecting. On top of the prints I have made drawings of the screwed up remnants of failed work, and applied abstract paint marks. The work is then contained within white frames.
The series seeks to explore the notion of productive work.
In the context of the magazine ads which feature peculiarly empty, pre-digital office spaces and texts that promise idealistic notions of success, efficiency and progress, the work seeks to question whether our digital age is really any more productive than the past, how we define useful or meaningful labour, what the role of the physical now plays in the idea of "an honest day's work", and how one might judge the value of the artist's intervention.
Underlying the work is a set of questions about failure, disappointment and wasted time, set against ideas of success, growth and productivity - nostalgic notions that seem to be increasingly dominant in these times of regressive economic policies.
