The Artists Company (TAC) explores the relationship between art and labour through Got Your Name Or Not?. The term ‘artwork’ often refers to the production of an art object or an art object itself. As part of the ‘participatory art’, TAC will employ expedient means to capture time as currency, labour as art. Here, artist’s individuality, style, and ownership are put aside. Participants are given an opportunity to be artists in an art show by committing their time and effort, where timestamps will record their artistic labour. It will be one’s physical presence that determines how much of the work one ‘owns’ at the end of the show. Each participant becomes conscious of the time, labour involved and immaterial and intangible value of these constructions, as they clock in/out, work on their art and develop a social bond with the artists.
The construction of relationships and artworks are what embodies this form of public art, where the art-making is set within a conceptual framework with a social objective. The interaction amidst laborious art tasks enables artworks to come into being through the execution of a set of instructions and a series of subsequent actions. Through Got Your Name Or Not? TAC asks the following questions: When two or more people are given the artistic license to decide where the work is going, how do they come to a consensus? Does an artwork need to come with an author? When is a work considered completed? Will an artwork ever be complete?
The public is sought to come forth to work in the art studio on specific dates beginning on 1st May (Labour Day), to enter the art space and participate in the frameworks or simple instructions that TAC has prepared. The participatory art making will happen collaboratively over SEVEN DAYS and clock in 49 HOURS.
Open Studio (Art Making)
Week 1: May 1st, 5th, 6th (Labour Day, Sat, Sun)
Week 2: May 12th, 13th (Sat, Sun)
Week 3 May 19th, 20th (Sat, Sun)
Exhibition: May 21th – 26th (Mon-Sat), 1pm – 8pm
Artists Dialogue: May 26th, 3pm – 5pm
Venue: Your Mother Gallery, 91A Hindoo Road, Singapore 209126
When: 1 - 26 May 2018,
