Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Art
A pew, a bench, speakers on stands in a gallery
a caucasian person with short brown hair and stubble crouches in a gallery.
a caucasian person with short brown hair and stubble with headphones around their neck
A pew with A5 prints laid in 4 piles
sculptural assemblage on the floor and wall of a gallery. There are trainers, sticks, plastic tubing, a hand-like object, an orange drawstring bag.
sculptural assemblage on the floor of a gallery. There are trainers, sticks, plastic tubing, a hand-like object.
abstract sculptural assemblage on gallery wall and floor. Objects include an orange plastic drawstring bag, speaker, media player and block of wood
a pile of acorn heads on a gallery floor
hand like sculpture on a gallery floor
sculptural assemblage in the corner of a gallery. There are trainers, a pile of bones.
a bench sits in front of two speakers on stands

Glasgow Project Space

Songs for Work brought together sound installation and sculpture, poetry and performance by three Glasgow-based artists – Aideen Doran, Beth Dynowski and Susannah Stark – to examine the effects of work on subjectivity, community and wider social, political and ethical imaginaries. Being about work, the exhibition was also necessarily about time – the absence or abundance of it – and about the spaces between violence and reverie.

Doran’s work was a multi-vocal sound installation using the late poet and social activist Karen Brodine’s work Woman Sitting at the Machine, Thinking. Dynowski has a long-form poem and new performance exploring work, identity and improvisation, performed by Christopher Scanlan from Scottish Youth Theatre. Stark has a new body of sculptural works with sonic elements that she collaborated on with her mother.

The project looked at both the individual and collective body at work and the cultural practices, strategies and meaning-making which undermine, reinvent and transcend work as world-making. It pays attention to how we shape and are shaped by what we do for a living in all senses – physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually and politically.

Supported by Glasgow International