Labour & dignity

The attractive surface of an object can hide the organisation of labour that made it. A pattern needs designers, printers and dyers; a book needs typesetters, press workers and people who move it into readers’ hands. To admire the result without asking about these people is to leave half the object outside the frame. Our collection treats making as a social relationship, not the isolated genius of a named designer.

Morris’s socialist writing makes rest and meaningful activity part of the question. An efficient product is not enough if its makers have no say over their working day. Stepanova’s textile experiments approach the issue from another direction: art should enter production and ordinary life. These are different projects, with different contradictions. Together they ask whether beauty can be separated from the conditions of the work behind it.

Carry three questions through the gallery: whose labour is named, whose remains invisible, and who could change the arrangement? A product marked as publicly owned still needs these questions. The value we defend is the dignity and agency of working people, not admiration for production at any human cost.