Time & Motion uses artworks, research projects, archival materials and interventions to track our journey through the world of work, from clocking on at the factory gates to checking in online from our home office. At a time of structural changes in the labour market and sharp transitions in business practice to address global recession, the exhibition asks timely questions including ‘What happened to the eight hour day?’, ‘What is your work life balance?’ and ‘How has technology affected the way that you work?’

Born out of the transforming force of the Industrial Revolution, the concept of the eight-hour working day was fought for alongside wider struggles for improved working conditions. This panel takes its name from the exhibition of the same name, which re-examines the relevance of our traditional notions of the eight-hour working day in a digital age.

How is digital transformation changing the time management of our working lives?

This panel is addressing questions relating to the contemporary division of work time, leisure time and the ambiguous position of “creative work” somewhere in between. How is work and “free” time evaluated in the creative economy and across different global contexts? Each departing from artistic research projects, the speakers will address questions such as ‘What happened to the eight hour day?’, ‘What is your work life balance?’ and ‘How has technology affected the way that you work? The participating artists Ellie Harrison, Sam Meech and Oliver Walker all take a direct approach to questioning how value is created both in terms of artwork as process and product, questioning our assumptions of work, trade and exchange, through different methods of making, analysing, measuring and trading time, often that forming the material of the artwork. Our world of work, from clocking on at the factory gates to checking in online from our home office or local entrepreneurial networking space is both curse and blessing. As our industrial economy has given way to a service and knowledge economy, producing ideas and experiences rather than artefacts, how have our patterns of day-to-day working life changed and how have these impacted on being an artist or the ‘industry’ of making art? Do artists face a stronger sense of precarity or do they enjoy a more assured security than other members of society through a different set of values?