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'look busy', a solo show by Dale Lawrence
Wednesday 6th April 2016, 5.30pm
Lawrence’s work, the lion’s share of which is a combination of linocuts and acrylic paintings but also includes a monotype, a screen print, two wax-print dyed fabric pieces and a hand-woven wool tapestry, explores the nature and often-questionable necessity of work. look busy refers to the need for us all - arguably artists in particular – to fill our time with activity, whether or not that activity has any utility or purpose. Does art need to be time-consuming, or indeed painstaking, to justify itself? Interrogating idleness and what might be called an occupation obsession; look busy disdains and commends the so-called “artistic process” in equal measure.
“Artists share with the unemployed the dubious luxury of spare time, existing as they do on the outskirts of the traditional workforce, yet these characters could scarcely be viewed more differently, the former as almost dignitaries and the latter as a problematic drain on society. Yet both enjoy and lament the pleasure and pain of being superfluous.” - Dale Lawrence
look busy will run until Saturday 7th May 2016.