Exhibition Launch: Manual Labours – The Complaining Body at Peltz Gallery, 5 February 2016

Manual Labours : The Complaining Body

Exhibition Launch: Friday 5 February 2016, 6-8pm
Dates: Saturday 6 February – Thursday 3rd March 2016
Location: Peltz Gallery, Birkbeck, School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square, London
WC1H 0PD
Opening Hours: Monday-Friday: 10am-8pm and Saturday: 10am – 5pm. Closed Sundays.
www.manuallabours.co.uk

Join us at The Peltz Gallery for the first presentation of research from Manual Labours: The Complaining Body and the launch of our third publication Manual Labours Manual #3.

The Complaining Body
Manual Labours: The Complaining Body is a one month exhibition at The Peltz Gallery and presents the process, findings and analysis of an 18 month long investigation into the physical and emotional affects of complaining, receiving complaints and not being able to complain in the context of work. Our research has involved a series of workshops with call centre workers in a London Borough Council, commuters on a train station platform in Worcester and staff dealing with student complaints in a UK University. The exhibition presents our practice-based methodologies and offers a moment for new contributors to engage and discuss the findings, drawing on what complaints we share and can collectivise around.

Manual Labours: The Complaining Body asks: what are the physical impacts on the body when complaining, receiving complaints and when you feel unable to complain?  The emotional labour involved in listening to and managing complaints; the social and cultural conditions of complaining and the affect of not complaining all have repercussions on the body as a site of resistance, absorption and expulsion. The research explores the normative discourses of the good, healthy, productive body which are disrupted by the complaining body.  The uncomplaining body is often in fact a sick body, having to perform a healthy body and happy self by internalising and stifling our complaints.  The exhibition reflects on stories of how and why the complaining body is performed, silenced and internalised.

Manual Labours: The Complaining Body is a practice-based research project by Sophie Hope and Jenny Richards, developed with the artist Sarah Browne, choreographer Hamish MacPherson and writer Ivor Southwood who have produced three new commissions in response to the theme. Strands of their research will be presented at the Peltz Gallery.  Ivor Southwood launches a new essay, The Uncomplaining Body, which investigates the culture of a large workplace from the perspective of an outsourced temporary cleaner/porter.  Hamish MacPherson invites you to join him in Breastbeating – a card game simulating an after work session in the pub where the only thing you have to do is complain. And on March 1st a curated screening by Sarah Browne entitled The Revolting Body shares research that has informed her new commission Report to an Academy, concerned with the academic environment as a workplace. The exhibition also includes a specially commissioned feedback form by artist Barry Sykes and a newly designed table to host complaining bodies designed by architects Samson Adjei and Greg Epps.

Manual Labours: The Complaining Body Events

Exhibition Launch: Friday 5 February 2016, 6-8pm
Peltz Gallery, Birkbeck School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD
Launch of the exhibition and the new publication Manual Labours Manual #3 alongside Ivor Southwood’s commissioned essay, The Uncomplaining Body. Ivor will introduce his essay and refreshments will be served!

Analysing The Uncomplaining Body: Tuesday 1 March 2016
4-6pm Round Table Workshop
Peltz Gallery, Birkbeck School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD

Join us for an afternoon round-table workshop to collectively analyse some of the research gathered through The Complaining Body project.  The event focuses on the physical implications of the stifling of complaints and how the body responds through the expulsions of matter in the form of diarrhoea, vomiting and crying. We invite you to join us in sharing your experiences and perspectives, helping to construct and imagine what the physical effects of a collective complaint might produce.

The Revolting Body, selected by Sarah Browne: Tuesday 1 March 2016, 6pm Screening
Peltz Gallery, Birkbeck School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD

Following the workshop we will screen The Revolting Body a selection of moving image material from diverse sources including artist film and video, amateur collectives and contemporary protest groups, produced over the last forty years.  The ‘body’ alluded to in the programme title might be an individual or a collective body, troubled with imminent eruption.

Whistleblowing as Complaining; Blacklisting as Bullying: 3 March, 6-9pm
Peltz Gallery, Birkbeck School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD

This workshop brings together activists and academics to explore cases of speaking out and complaining about working conditions individually and collectively. We will be sharing examples of the personal, mental, physical, material and legal ingredients needed to complain and the impacts and implications. Presentations include Lucy Parker’s current project Blacklist and her research into the experiences of blacklisted workers.

Full details of the events programme go to: www.manuallabours.co.uk or email manual.labours@gmail.com
All events are free.

Spring Exhibitions

Manual Labours: The Complaining Body has been developed in partnership with In Certain Places, Preston, Movement, Worcester and The Showroom Gallery, London. Each of these organisations form a site to distribute our research and present the new commissions by Sarah Browne, Hamish MacPherson and Ivor Southwood.

In November 2015 we returned to In Certain Places to present a special event in collaboration with University of Central Lancashire’s Institute for research into Organisations Work and Employment (iROWE).  Together with Sweta Rajan-Rankin (lecturer in Social Policy at Brunel University, London) we discussed the processes of complaining from making to managing to mellowing.  Hamish MacPherson presented the first stage of his commission Breastbeating.

1) Manual Labours : The Complaining Body
Sarah Browne, Hamish MacPherson and Ivor Southwood
The Showroom Gallery
Penfold Street, London
4-12 April 2016

All three new commissions will be presented in a special exhibition at The Showroom Gallery this April.  The exhibition includes a new project by Sarah Browne titled Report to an Academy (drawing from the Kafka story of the same title) which explores the physical sensations and impacts of speech, in search of new articulacy and agility.  Ivor Southwood will share his new essay The Uncomplaining Body and Hamish MacPherson will invite new contributors to take part in his ongoing work Breastbeating, a card game developed from a series of workshops with call centre workers in a London borough council. www.theshowroom.org

2) Manual Labours : The Complaining Body
Sarah Browne, Hamish MacPherson and Ivor Southwood
Movement
2 Worcester Foregate Street Railway Station, Worcester
22 June 22 – 22 July 2016

Sarah Browne’s new film Report to an Academy will be screened in a month long exhibition at Movement, an artist-run space located on the Worcester Foregate Street train station platform.

About Manual Labours
Manual Labours is a research project exploring physical and emotional relationships to work, initiated by Sophie Hope and Jenny Richards.  Manual Labours: The Complaining Body is the second phase of our research and explores the world of workplace complaints with artists Sarah Browne, choreographer Hamish MacPherson and writer Ivor Southwood and is developed in partnership with In Certain Places, Preston, Movement, Worcester and The Showroom Gallery, London.  Manual Labours : The Complaining Body is supported by Arts Council England’s Grants for the Arts, The Elephant Trust, The Birkbeck/Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund and Birkbeck University Widening Access.

If you would like to find out more or contribute to this project please email us: manual.labours@gmail.com or visit www.manuallabours.co.uk