Songs for Work brings 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 is also necessarily about time – the absence or abundance of it – and about the spaces between violence and reverie.

Doran’s work is 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 looks 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.

Performances by Christopher Scanlan are taking place between 11 and 4 each day. Please note the performer is not wearing a mask, is taking Covid tests throughout and the performance is subject to cancellation if showing any Covid symptoms (the performer receives full sick pay in this event) and the gallery window is open.

Up to four visitors maximum, from up to two different households, are allowed in the gallery during each time slot.

Supported by Glasgow International