What Does An Artist Do All Day? (The Archive)
The routines, habits and laborious practices of the artist make up the central theme of this series through their repositioning towards an equal standing with works traditionally considered as ‘finished’. What is the detritus left behind from the creative process? How does it stand in relation to typical final pieces?
By presenting the artist figure as the subject of the archive, I attempt to begin an investigation into the relationship between biography and artwork in order to try and find out how aspects of the artists personal life – their health, socio-economic conditions, or available resources – affect not just the content of the work, but their ability to even make work in the first place.
Taking inspiration from the emphasised importance of mistakes, rubbings out and working methods in scientific areas of research, the device of the archive is used to display the work as a more formally rigorous academic investigation into the conditions of the artists practice.
This research is informed in particular by the context of the last year and the discourse surrounding ‘essential work’. With artists having been overlooked and supported again and again, the piece takes on the guise of conventional rigour to dismiss notions of play within the artists practice.
What Does An Artist Do All Day? aims to chart the routines, data and background tasks of the artist as work in order to reposition their practice as valuable within the confines of a capitalist society.
