There's no work in the arts, but so much to be done

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Emily Chu, Designer- Illustrator, 2024

(courtesy of the Gallery)

Featured Artists: Moriah Crocker, Emily Davidson, Alyson Davies, Are You Artists Or Cops (Daniel Ennett & Co), Camille-Zoé Valcourt-Synnott, Lan “Florence” Yee, Emily Chu (Designer - Illustrator)

According to the 2021 census, there were 42,685 Albertans employed in arts, entertainment and recreation. In 2023, the visual and applied arts and live performance industries contributed about $1.58 billion in GDP in Alberta, and had the largest sector increase (7.1%) in GDP compared to 2022. However, artists' median income ($28,500) is 51% lower than that of all Alberta workers ($52,400) and artists with undergraduate degrees earn about 55% less ($30,300) than workers with the same level of education ($66,500).

The image of the artist as an independent creative worker in the studio no longer holds. Artists’ working conditions more closely resemble those of gig workers: short-term contract work offering no paid time off, workers’ compensation, pension plan, or health or dental insurance. Canada’s public funding model for visual artists, which relies on one-time project creation and presentation grants, does little to remedy these conditions of precarity and uncertainty. Artists face lengthy bureaucratic application processes, competing against hundreds of peers for limited resources and with no guarantee that their work will be remunerated. Within this model, artists must assume a myriad of administrative roles – as accountant, grant writer, project manager, publicist, etc… – in order to secure the resources to sustain their practice. If a thriving arts sector is, as research consistently suggests, in the public interest, who benefits from this state of affairs? We know who suffers: arts workers do.

While artwork epitomises the labour of the artist, the vast majority of artists’ work goes unseen and unpaid. This exhibition aims to render visible the work that artists (and other workers) do in order to produce artworks and sustain artistic practices. The artworks on display render visible the material costs, time, and (at times emotional) labour required to produce artworks. These works situate artists as workers and within networks of skilled workers in order to articulate common struggles and interests, both historically and contemporary. Many of the featured artists support themselves and their practices through other formal and informal labour, including research, teaching, design, and administrative and care work.

In the spirit of transparency, Latitude 53 staff and exhibition contributors have consented to keep the gallery open to the public during installation Oct 1-4 and to make publicly accessible key documents related to the production of this exhibition, including the exhibition budget and curator, artist, and presenter contracts.

Events:

The Potential of Invitations (and when you should just say no) with Christina Battle | Nov 2

Artist Talk with Camille-Zoé Valcourt-Synnott | Nov 7

Let's Talk About Work, Baby! with Kalyna Somchynsky | Nov 9