Critical Reflection
I decided I would carry on exploring the possibilities involved with the juxtaposition of deeply-etched, overly exhausted steel plates with text and imagery. With this combination, I intend to depict the exploitation of workers with regards to labour under capitalism, based on my own experiences and those that are highlighted by the media and Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci.
As mentioned in Unit 2, the extended periods of time during which my steel plates are exposed to nitric acid, cause the openly bit gestures to erode away, leaving a harsh, physical, etched image, but also revealing a delicacy as holes begin to appear and edges begin to wither away. This process is metaphorical of the labour related hardships faced by many workers as they aim to achieve financial stability in a time period proving ever more difficult for those worse off.
In order to align this process with image and text, I needed to find appropriate material to work with. At the end of the previous unit, I visited The Marxist Memorial Archives in Farringdon, so I have used material from there as well as first hand material from protests I have attended about working conditions/pay and texts I have written myself based on my experiences regarding labour and with influence from my research.
Most of the work this semester has been carried out with the degree show and the research festival in mind. I have tried to separate where I have made plans and observations about these events and the work surrounding it, into different sections named 'Degree Show' and 'Research Publication'. This section will focus on my ideas and the research and concepts which has informed my work and how my work has hopefully developed throughout the semester and from Units 1 and 2.
Detail of Abraded
Abraded - Etching with aquatint on Somerset, 65x41cm
Abraded is a print made up of text which follows on from a line in a poem named 'Dinosauria, We', by Charles Bukowski. The poem outlines a post-apocalyptic world ruined by Capitalism and the rich and greedy. It talks about "hospitals which are too expensive, it's cheaper to die" etc and one line reads, "Castrated, debauched, disinherited, because of this". Bukowski. C (1992), The Last Night of Earth Poems, Santa Rosa,Black Sparrow Press
I chose to extend this part of the poem into;
"TOILWORN ABRADED INCARCERATED BECAUSE OF THIS
SPENT AND CONSUMED AND STUPEFIED BECAUSE OF THIS
UNDERMINED ENERVATED AND STONED BECAUSE OF THIS
DOG TIRED INTOXICATED DEGRADED BECAUSE OF THIS..."
The text is a direct response to fatigue and other forms of exploitation with reference to labour. For example, 'toil worn' is a phrase which literally describes somebody exhausted by physical labour. "Spent and Consumed" is a play on words as both relate to capitalism and both relate to a state of fatigue. The text is physically engrained into its surface in the same way capitalism is engrained into society and people accept it. In support of that, Gramsci suggests:
"Cultural Hegemony is most strongly manifested when those ruled by the dominant class come to believe that that the economic and social conditions of their society are natural and inevitable, rather than created by people with a vested interest in particular social, economic and political orders"
Cole, NL. (2020) What Is Cultural Hegemony?. What Is Cultural Hegemony? (thoughtco.com)
The plate itself has been deeply bitten with gestural marks of sugar lift solution, scratches, grind marks and spit-bite, which depict exhaustion and fatigue in a sense that the plate is worn and destroyed. These marks also appear industrial in a sense that they are gauges or scrapes made into steel which is hard-surfaced. The marks are similar to that of cuts and other injuries I have experienced working with my hands and specifically with steel and tools, therefore these could then be seen as a depiction of scars. I found that by creating these marks and etching them deeply, that the print would hold more ink and that this would impact the weight of the print, appearing it heavier and deeper.
I had hoped that this surface would amplify the potency of the text but also disfigure it in areas, challenging the viewer to read closer and became more engaged with the image. The surface of the paper once printed, is rough and dark but has light areas so that certain words are made more visible. I have been using text in this way for a few months now and find that I enjoy the contrast this has to clear, bold, headline-like text, although each approach has its own purpose and I have not abandoned the latter.
And Many Suffer(yellowed) - etching with aquatint on Somerset, 55x35cm
"And Many Suffer" - etching with aquatint on Somerset, 55x35cm
And Many Suffer is another print in this series that uses text and relies on etching processes to create a visual language. The image contains text found in a book (Hazell, A.P (1896) Capitalist Exploitation of the Worker. Twentieth Century Press) from the Marx Memorial Library and talks about how the capitalist is able to utilize their means by creating wealth without partaking in any sort of labour or work; but by hiring others to do this when needed. When they are not needed they are then let go and the capitalist is at "no real risk"(page 409, Capitalist Exploitation of the Worker), whereas the worker will be jobless and will suffer. Those with wealth to begin with are able to create more wealth easily, whereas those without it must either work extremely hard, often in jobs they do not want, or live without it. The book from which the text is taken is from 1896, yet this element of capitalist exploitation remains prominent in modern society.
With this print I aimed to make it appear interesting by pulling back the text behind the textures and marks. Some of the text becomes abstracted, but much is left readable upon close inspection or time spent with the work. The idea that the viewers should want to make out what is being said, is important with this work as hopefully by reading the text with closer concentration, the concepts of the writing are imprinted into the viewer's head as opposed to an easily read, title-like piece of text. This is of the influence of American painter Glenn Ligon, whos text based paintings begin to breakdown and become abstracted as they maneuver down the canvas. Through this use of visual language, the viewer is challenged by Ligon to engage more with the work, which is often of a social or political context.
I have been using the properties of steel and the grainy atmosphere this creates as part of my work. Not only do I resonate with this aesthetic, but I also feel it adds to the industrial grit that I am attempting to create within the prints. This material is definitely fundamental to my practice, however, outside of university, there are limited facilities which allow the use of nitric acid and also have screen-printing facilities (for screen etch-resist), so I will have to find a new way of etching it.
Other techniques used here include spitbite and sugar-lift which I used to create marks remnant of old decaying walls or trampled flooring or pavement. These marks are upon and amongst the text, in a similar way to how musicians chop up and relay sounds over other sounds. I am beginning to notice similarities within my prints to such music, and also the visual language of the walls and the streets within areas of which I inhabit. For example, the harsh marks within this print appear similar to potholes in roads, or areas of subway walls which have been chipped away and ignored over the years. This is an aesthetic I have been trying to tap into and use to communicate a certain atmosphere or emotion, and I am beginning to feel as though this is starting to become more successful. Workers do get worn down and ignored by those with the power to bring change and for me these types of marks symbolize that.
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Toil Worn - Etching on Somerset, 70x40cm
I want my work to look how it feels to wake up on a Monday morning at 5am, weeks from the nearest pay day and equally weeks from the last time you were paid. It is cold and dark and 55 hours of a job that you hate is imminent. You must use the last of your money to fuel your car, to get to work, which pays for your car. The only down time you will have for the next 14 hours is 15 minutes break at 10am and 30 minutes at 1pm, during which you try and get some sleep because you are exhausted. It is depressing to think that this is what is in store for the next 50 odd years until you finally retire, but only if the capitalist government lets you, as the retirement age increases every few years.
I started by saying I want my work to look like this. Actually, I find it necessary to do so because I think it is important that these emotions and these experiences are materialized into artwork. The exploitation of workers under capitalism, utilizes the hegemonic systems that manipulate the working class into accepting this as a way of life, and if they work hard enough, maybe they will achieve a slice of success in the form of middle-management or someday becoming an owner of a company and doing to your employees what was done to you until you made it this far. You think that, because you were able to achieve ‘success’ this way, that it is only fair others should go through what you did. This is a form of “Pulling oneself up by the bootstraps” and is referred to by Antonio Gramsci as a form of ‘common sense’, which manipulates workers into accepting this as a way of life, feeding capitalism, often at the expense of the worker’s wellbeing or social life. Cole, NL. (2020) What Is Cultural Hegemony. What Is Cultural Hegemony? (thoughtco.com)
This example may even seem appealing to those who make it to the other side and are comfortable middle-class citizens towards the end of their life. During a recent interview, Sir Kier Starmer was asked to “Define working-class”. His response romanticized this story, claiming that the definition of working class is:
“To have a decent education, to get a decent secure job, to get a car, to have a nice holiday… Many people go on their journey from what you might call working class to middle class”.
LBC, (2023) Define ‘working class’: Keir Starmer challenged by Nick Ferrari - YouTube
This all sounds nice and rosy but is often not the case and to normalize that the working class is about financially bettering yourself, completely disregards those who have not the means to do so - but work equally as hard or harder in attempt to anyway. This form of common sense would suggest those who have not ‘bettered themselves’ in the eyes of Sir Kier have failed and have not “pulled themselves up by the bootstraps”.
I want my work to look how this feels. As mentioned with the previous works, I have been overly exposing steel to nitric acid as representation of the exhaustion workers experience trying to pull themselves up. It represents the person waking up at 5am, weeks from the nearest payday and equally weeks from the last time they were paid etc… It represents the mental suffering and the physical strain working a labour-intensive job, fueled by toxic masculinity and the bonus the foreman will receive at Christmas if his floor-staff make them enough money. My work is about the labour power which is harnessed by those with capital and extracted from those who have only that to give - leaving them spent and consumed by it.
Toil Worn is named from an expression used to describe somebody who is ‘exhausted by physical labour’. Its form is that of something that has totally been disfigured from its manipulation. The plate itself has holes and withered, ragged edges and has begun to fall apart as I have printed it. (I have editioned this print at 10 but I don’t think it will make it!) The story I described is what I was facing throughout my apprenticeship and beyond. I mentioned with Abraded, that the physical marks resembled that of scraps, cuts and scars. Toil Worn may appear similar visually, but I feel like this work closer represents mental strain and emotion. It represents feelings that will stay with me forever and something that I work hard now in order to avoid returning to.
Details of Toil Worn and Blue
Toil Worn (Spent and Consumed)
I have spoken about the three prints individually above and have spoken about the planning for this which regards the degree show in its relevant section. Here I will explain why the work is a triptych and other elements which concern my critical reflection.
The three prints when displayed together provide a narrative to my thought. The text within And Many Suffer details how capitalism manipulates workers when it needs to, by exploiting them for their labour power before disregarding them as and when they please. Its harsh gestures and bite marks accelerate the idea that this causes suffering for the working class, which is juxtaposed alongside two prints which share a similar concept.
Abraded has a similar visual language but the text provides a response to how capitalism treats its workers. It does this by ending each line with “by this” which is in reference to what is being outlined in And Many Suffer. I chose to position Abraded at the far right because in the West we read from left to right. We are used to approaching image or text in this way and worked like this in order to achieve a sense of narrative. I would also like to add that capitalism is a right-sided agenda regarding the political scope and to position a text featuring “by this” on that side, was a further nod to the impact capitalism can have on workers.
The piece gravitates around Toil Worn which is a physical embodiment of my experiences relating to labour intensive work which has been dictated by capitalism. There was a temptation around positioning this work at the right, as the prints would appear to become more fatigued as they make their way across the wall, but I wanted this work to be central as to position the embodiment of emotion and fatigue between these two text-based responses to Capitalism. Sometimes, words are not enough to express an atmosphere that I want to create, and I think in this instance, I tried to use composition to help with that
Toil Worn (Spent and Consumed) - Digital print, 3x300x150cm
The decision to make the prints digital came because I wanted something to be impactful and hard-hitting. Something that you could not avoid in a room, as if it were somebody barging through a crowd with their elbows sticking out and shouting at a person on stage. The work certainly filled the room and I received feedback that it was striking and had its own atmosphere. Scanning work and enlarging digitally means you lose the semi-sculptural quality to etching, but with the 1200dpi scanner available, the quality of the image and the properties of steel plate etching are maintained, which is important within my work.
When speaking with a visiting lecturer (Ian Chamberlain), he noted that the digital prints might be an effective way of applying for open calls or something which would, along with my ability to weld and polish steel, enable me to make a huge etching which may not be possible without proper funding or the means to do it. I would apply with a proposal and show whoever it may concern my prints enlarged digitally, as evidence of what could be achievable.
Spent and Consumed:
Within my work I have been attempting to portray a sense of atmosphere, which can be found by etching steel due to its properties. I have also been exhausting the plates in nitric acid before printing them, leaving within my work evidence of labour that the plate has endured. Another element of my work is materiality. This material is fundamental for my practice because of my experience with steel and what resonates within me when I work with (or against) it. Furthermore, it holds more ink when creating etchings and can withstand more punishment in the acid than zinc and copper before eroding away. It takes a tougher acid like nitric to etch. Because of these reasons, I enjoy working with and upon steel and did so for the Bargehouse exhibition where I displayed steel plates named Shattered and Exploit. I decided that for the degree show I wanted to expand on this and explore further the work I could make with steel.
I think the planning and processes for preparing this installation are more relevant to the degree show section so here I will contextualise my work and speak more about them as individual prints and as an installation.
For the plates, I decided to work with photomontage so that I could juxtapose text and image along with different ideas and examples, which were determined by the concept of “pulling oneself up by the bootstraps” according to Gramsci and his ideas surrounding the manipulation of the working class through common sense.
Cole, NL. (2020) What Is Cultural Hegemony. What Is Cultural Hegemony? (thoughtco.com)
At the centre of the work is a panel containing text, which is engraved into the plate, in the same way capitalism and its systems are engraved into society. The plate is bitten at the edges and appears eroded and textured, which is symbolic of the effects of the text it contains on workers. I felt to include this text within the work would benefit the rest of the work, by drawing together the underlying concept.
I had found that, with limited time it was not going to be possible to etch away my plates like in Shattered and Exploit, so I decided to etch into the plates, elements of existing decomposition in the form of billboard and poster tears and textures. I had hoped this would give the material a fatigued look and resemble that what you might see in the streets or on decaying buildings. These areas are often home to graffiti layered on top of weathered walls and torn down posters, a form of visual language which, to me, is of a similar atmosphere to jazz and hip hop. Samples of sounds and old music are layered upon drumbeats and lyrics and whatever the artist finds – it can be anything from sirens to alarm clocks to answering machines, to the underground going by or a news anchor telling a story. Throughout the MA I have been trying to harness this atmosphere into my work through texture and by taking images from these areas and printing it within my work. I feel a likeness in this atmosphere to the working class relationship to labour. Maybe this is simply from journeying to and from and through such areas on my bike on my way to and from work, and that has began to resonate with me, as I relate one to the other. The location of the bar I work in at the moment is joined with a graffiti tunnel named Leake Street which is home to all kinds of ever changing samples of text, image, texture and colour. I feel however that there is a deeper connection than just this aesthetic and is something I have not quite worked out enough to put into words yet. Edward Hopper said, "If you could say it with words, there would be no reason to paint", so perhaps I can aim to create this atmosphere visually and materially and that becomes sufficient?
Spent and Consumed contains many images and collages them along with text I have found in the media or in urban environments, as well as text I have written. I would say a particular influence for this work and much of my work, is the back catalogue of the band Portishead, who relay machine-like sounds and chopped-up samples over often quite heavy drumbeats, juxtaposed with lyrics and the voice of Beth Gibbons. To add to that, they incorporate the sound of a needle crackling over a record which I liken to the visual atmosphere created within etching.
With Gramsci’s idea of “Pulling oneself up by the bootstraps” positioned at the centre, the work’s other 8 plates contain subject matter relating to this concept, as well as the wider concept of cultural hegemony and the general exploitation of the working class regarding labour.
Top Row of Spent and Consumed: Click images to enlarge.
When I began researching Gramsci's notions of cultural hegemony, my first thought was that the royal family is this idea personified. This is a family which is born ruling and allows the media and other social structures and events/traditions like the speech on Christmas Day to solidify their position. The fact that they are funded by the tax payer for literally no reason other than they were born royal, whilst millions struggle through the cost-of-living crisis is, in my opinion, barbaric and outdated. I chose to juxtapose headlines from the media like "Bills Agony" and "Retirement Dreams Dashed For Millions", next to images of the royals who are printed upon golden spray paint, to portray the contrast in their way of living to those who they 'rule'.
"50 is no time to put your feet up. You've got 20 more years of graft", was a sentence actually used by Jeremy Hunt, The Chancellor of the Exchequer, when commenting on the retirement age and is an example of how the capitalist regards its workers. Owen. G, (2023) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11848651
The biased media, ran by tyrants like Rupert Murdoch and other capitalist exploiters, normalizes this treatment of workers whilst also normalizing the division between the ruling class and the working class. The public continue to accept this division and it exemplifies how hegemonic structures such as the media control and manipulate the population.
The remaining 5 plates are featured here, all plates are 63x50cm and steel
These plates feature more textures made up of image, gestures, marks and text. I have described them individually within the reel and this will be clear once you have clicked a particular image.
Spent and Consumed - silkscreen ink on nine steel plates attached to a steel structure, 245x250cm
The plates were fitted magnetically to the steel structure in order to achieve accessibility, as the work was too large with the plates attached to fit through doors. The structure was built at such a size to appear the work louder within the exhibition, similarly to why I increased the size of my prints for Toil Worn (Spent and Consumed). My work is not quiet, and I do not aim for it to be polite. It has something to say and utilizes materials and their properties to help say it. I see this piece of work as a benchmark and a good ground for me to build upon. These types of works are not as common as prints on paper and hopefully I will be able to attract attention from institutions or galleries which would present me with the opportunity to create something even louder and more complex. I am excited about where this work could lead me to in the future.
Research Festival Work
For the research festival, I decided I wanted to write texts or anecdotes which were based upon my research. This would include primary research done by collecting stories from others as well as my own experiences, collecting images from protests and using images taken from local areas and anywhere that has evidence of degradation or labour. The texts I was writing were influenced by Marxist thinkers like Gramsci, Berardi and Karl Marx as well as writer and poet Charles Bukwoski, whose writings of the working class often regards the exploits of work and of capitalism. His work I find inspiring because it puts into words the authentic experiences of himself and those around him.
“At the heart of Gramsci’s concern is the complex passage of lived experience, always mediated by existing explanations of that experience, to political narratives and political movements capable of bringing about change.”
Hoare. G, Sperber. N (2015) An Introduction to Antonio Gramsci: His Life, Thought and Legacy, Bloomsbury Publishing
Some notes, anecdotes and responses to capitalist exploitation of the worker.
Below are some examples of the prints I have come up with whilst preparing for the Research Festival. Featured are Risographs, etchings, screenprints, digital prints and photographs. I would prefer to keep my publications uniform, using the same method of print throughout, and though risography would be the best option for this; when experimenting with this technique, I have found it to be quick, whilst maintaining aesthetic qualities such as texture and colour, making it perfect for printing a book. For Dirt and steel, I placed acetate with my text screen printed upon it, over a heavy-duty (red) pallet which is often used everywhere around the workplace, from building yards to supermarkets. This is just a starting point but I thought it was a clear example of where I want to take my work moving forward towards the research festival. I have mentioned in detail my plans for the Research Festival in its relevant section.
