Hard Yakka
HARD YAKKA is an exploration of the humble yet iconic flannel shirt. From artists to archaeologists, stockmen, lumberjacks, bogans or Grunge music fans, the flannel (‘plaid’) shirt has been a favourite item of attire that crosses different cultural associations and bridges the space-time of leisure and work. Long before the Work, Health & Safety culture of late capitalism brought the world hi-vis uniforms, the flannel shirt was associated with the trades, rural life and the working classes. Hence, the show may be read within the context of modern and contemporary artworks and portrait studies of the worker, the proletariat, and other complex historical associations between art and work, including the relations between artists and their affective labour and unpaid efforts. In HARD YAKKA Frederick draws upon past photographic practices and theory to look at how the sensory qualities of disembodied clothing and personal items are employed to invoke loss and also induce sensorial memory.
HARD YAKKA is inspired by Frederick’s observations of everyday slog and toil and her ongoing interests in the material traces made through human action; the contested value of everyday things; and the capacity of visual and sonic media to conjure different temporalities. As objects, traces, patterns and mnemonics of bodily gesture and form, Frederick’s artworks invite us to consider the nexus and the tensions between presence/absence, abstraction/representation and conceptual and decorative expression.
HARD YAKKA was exhibited at M16 Gallery, Friday 22 March – Sunday 14 April and opened Thursday 21 March 2024, 6pm – 8pm.
