In the bathroom, over the course of the weekend, I bathed with an old parchment indenture, a legal document where land and property is bound to bodies, washing away its past. Then sewing lengths of my hair into the surface, I re-inscribed the tissue with new texts, conjuring the special powers of hair to summon the cutis, or living skin, from the pellis, the dead, flayed hide.
For Artwork/Housework, reproductive labour (work performed within the domestic sphere to sustain a household; cleaning, cooking, childcare, raising the next generation, and looking after the elderly) is the starting point for this exhibition. Housework is time consuming, uncompensated and not generally recognised as work. Repetitive and endless it can be viewed as an obstacle to creativity. Politically speaking it can be seen in a similar way to artistic work: neither is economically valued and both remain outside the social framework of value-labour. For this exhibition artists were asked to respond to the theme of Housework/Artwork. The everyday material reality of reproductive labour was be presented and exhibited as art. Throughout the weekend there were demonstrations, performances, and hands on workshops.
