
Talk
A Discussion on Hierarchy and Influence, with The Workers
12 Mar 2016
Standpoint Gallery
London, United Kingdom
Wednesday to Saturday 12-6pm
Free
Successful artists have always employed studio assistants, their contribution glossed over in the narratives surrounding the artworks. 'The Workers' interleaves pieces by five artists who have been Susan Collis's long-term studio assistants, together with some new drawings by Collis.
Alongside their making for Collis, all of the selected artists are art practitioners in their own rights. They tend to share an affinity with her way of working, but at the same time, their diverse backgrounds and approaches to art-making have contributed to the life of the studio.
In acknowledging these relationships, the exhibition makes visible an obscured economy of manufacture, informal training and subsumed creativity. It values the unvalued, choosing to celebrate lines of mutual support, cross-pollination and resonance. The creative frustrations that come with making another artist's work - all the input that is absorbed, all that is discarded - play against the satisfactions and energies of social making. The years of the studio generate a micro-culture, a studio language of jokes, methodologies, improvisations, and idiosyncratic habits that bubble up in these works.
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