Toilet Cleaner Sketchbook
This concertina sketchbook depicts the tools - toilet brushes, rubber gloves and warning triangles, and materials - cleaning fluids and toilet paper, that are continuously used by the toilet cleaners, while reflecting on typical rates of pay for this group of staff. Actions such as scouring, scrubbing, tearing and splashing give an energetic feel to the work. The use of a poem at the end creates a powerful insight for the viewer, bringing realisation that the work of these staff is essential and valuable.
Ford Machinists Sketchbook
The Ford Machinists strike in 1968 was a dispute about job evaluation and skills, not pay. The machinists had to pass 3 skill tests to be graded as unskilled. Men only had to pass 2 tests to be graded as semi-skilled. The strike led to the Government Scamp Inquiry, where on the grounds of confidentiality, Ford refused to reveal the details of job evaluation scoring. The Scamp Report, 1968, noted Ford had been inconsistent in its job evaluation process as some men's grades had been appealed and upgraded without due process, yet it refused to consider the women's case.
Status and Values Sketchbooks
Sketchbooks are a useful tool to expand one's thoughts, opinions and understanding. My first attempt to depict my values identified that I had focussed on status issues - education, employment and home ownership, which were my Mother's value system - not my own! The second attempt considered principles or ideals that are important to how I lived my life - arguing to support others, pushing my boundaries, and enjoying education.
Argumentative Woman
Cyanotype print on dressmaking instruction sheet
Non-standard Use of Directions and A Traditional Woman? use cyanotype (blueprint) to contrast traditional female skills, such as dressmaking, with a non-traditional, assertive woman stance in silhouette. The female silhouette is an unclothed woman which raises questions for the viewer about whether a nude image is always sexualised. It is the artist's view that this silhouette is not sexualised because there is no gaze from the image, and the posture has hands on hips, saying 'don't mess with me'.
Homemaker Woman
Gloving leather and found paper on dressmaking pattern pieces
The Caring Hand of Mother is a collection of artworks made on the pattern pieces of a 1950s toddler's coat pattern that Aunt Joan saved from her children's clothes. Each pattern shape has been amended with an additional piece, significant to her conduct, to indicate her skills, thrift and care. The gloving leather shows how she would have lifted a child to comfort him/her; the paper patches indicate her repairs to hard wear on her son's clothes, and the square leather patch represents the many plasters she loving applied to grazed knees.
Migrant Worker Women
Cleaning Bottles are a series of works drawn with an identity card, an essential part of the cleaners' kit, which demonstrates their entitlement to work at that site. Repeatedly drawing the same bottles, from different angles, mimics the repetitive actions of the cleaners.
"Vulnerable while doing my job"
When cropping a drawing, a nozzle from another cleaning bottle appeared in this image. This nozzle looked suggestively phallic. I had interviewed Sarpong, and she told me she had been very upset the previous day, when a pervert had exposed himself to her. The image could have been further cropped remove the nozzle, but it was retained to allude to, and publicise, the unacceptable treatment that is targeted at vulnerable lone workers.
Payroll
Blue carbon paper on Izal toilet roll
At Ford, the machinists were the first group of staff who had their roles outsourced. Ford treated their female staff as a commodity that could be used and discarded. An Izal toilet roll is made from hard, industrial quality paper; has sheets which are a similar size to payslips; has repeating shapes, symbolic of the repetition of the production line; and is designed to be used and discarded. Ford's abject treatment of their Machinists is represented symbolically on a toilet roll from the 1960s.
Red dressmakers carbon on pay envelopes
20 pay packets depict the tools and equipment used by the women, making 20 seats an hour. The Ford Machinists strike was a grading dispute, that achieved a small pay rise, but did not gain recognition for either their skills or productivity. The semi-skilled machinists were only ever paid 7% less than the lowest unskilled male grade.
Key Fob
The key fob is a novel form for a sketchbook which focuses on small details of a larger object. Small pages create intriguingly vague imagery, but the scale of the sketchbook makes it an appealing object.
Car Seat Templates
Machine stitch, found fabric and dressmakers carbon on brown paper
The car seat templates give an unconventional format for a sketchbook. The signifiant stitching skills of the women are demonstrated by the cording foot drawn large. The distinctive shapes and industrial quality of brown paper and carbon paper convey the environment of the production line.
Montenegrin Sampler
The coloured Montenegrin sampler was worked to gain tactile understanding of the advanced stitching techniques used by 17th century middle class girls. Montenegrin stitch is a very complicated stitch which varies according to the direction of working and angle of corners. Working the sampler gave understanding of how the embodiment of 17th century embroidery - sitting still, with head bowed precluding eye contact, quietly and diligently working with a socially acceptable purpose - complied with paternalistic control of middle class girls.
Jacobean Sampler
The blackwork Jacobean sampler demonstrates how symbolism was used in the 17th century. The butterfly and caterpillar represent Charles I and II; the tree represents the Boscobel Oak in which Charles II hid; and the acorn represents the potential for the Royal line to continue. All parts of the design are symbolically relevant even if the meaning is lost to history (the snail and dragonfly), or is open to speculation, such as the possibility that the borage flower represents courage.
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