‘Invisible hands make light work: Art and unwaged labour’

Helen Hughes, ‘Watching Pickpocket’, 2015

MTalks welcomes Consortium! A series of conversations within a series of talks—presented by a coalition of partners who support emerging and experimental art and design practices in Melbourne and beyond. For the first event, Next Wave, Gertrude Contemporary, West Space, RMIT Design Hub and MPavilion get together to consort on invisible hands.

This evening’s panel—including artists Anastasia Klose, Lou Hubbard and Liang Luscombe, writer and artist Aurelia Guo, and writer and feminist Eva Birch—will ask: What kinds of emotional, affective and otherwise-hidden forms of unwaged labour hold up the art industry? To whom is this work relegated? What’s the relation between caring and sharing, and working and performing? In other words, what are the professional and social obligations of artists? And how can one strike or resist these un-unionised forms of ‘invisible’ labour?

Following the discussion, DJ and artist Lisa Lerkenfeldt will play a selection of music taking inspiration from notions of anachronism and lesser-known female music histories.