'The Margins of the Factory', an exhibition by Iratxe Jaio & Klaas van Gorkum at ADN Platform, Sant Cugat del Vallès (Barcelona), 25 January–30 April 2014. Curated by Latitudes.

Opening: Saturday 25 January

Opening programme

12h Opening at ADN Galería (c/ Enric Granados 49, Barcelona). Exhibition: “This is not Just Fucking Business” by Carlos Aires
13:15h Buses depart from ADN Galería towards ADN Platform in Sant Cugat del Vallès (Avda. Can Roquetas). RSVP to Claudia Segura at [email protected] / 93 451 00 64
14h Arrival at ADN Platform and lunch. Exhibitions: Micro-actions of Emergency #2 (Curated by Colectivo de vuelta y vuelta) and Iratxe Jaio & Klaas van Gorkum, The Margins of the Factory (Curated by Latitudes).
14:15h 15min. voice and instrumental performance by Nathaniel Robin Mann, as part of "The Margins of the Factory".
16/16:30h Buses return from ADN Platform to ADN Galería

"The Margins of the Factory" presents two recent projects by the Rotterdam-based duo Iratxe Jaio & Klaas van Gorkum that are motivated by their interest in art's relationship with labour. Each explores sculptural form and manufacturing processes from the perspective of artists who have not usually made objects. Iratxe Jaio & Klaas van Gorkum undertake what are in part sociological investigations by documenting the local, marginal effects of the displacement of manufacturing industries over the last two generations with the emergence of the global market. Emerging from the artists' personal history and implicating the direct effects of their own vocation as well as work they ask of others, the projects are moreover complicit in asking what kind of industriousness brings value and what political life objects might have.

The exhibition opening features a performance by British “avant-folk” musician Nathaniel Robin Mann, developed in collaboration with Jaio & van Gorkum around the raw footage of Work in Progress and the tradition of work song. Mann interprets the Basque popular song “Oi Peio Peio” – a dialogue between a woman worker and her cruel boss, who insists that she carries on working throughout the night. First collected in Cancionero Popular Vasco in 1918, the song was popularized by singer–songwriter Mikel Laboa, founder of “Ez Dok Amairu” (“No Thirteen”), the cultural movement of Basque poets, musicians and artists whose name was a suggestion of sculptor Jorge Oteiza.

Central to Producing time in between other things (2011) is a selection of wooden objects made by retired factory worker Jos van Gorkum – Gorkum’s grandfather – which the artists documented in the homes of his relations, friends and former neighbours across the Netherlands. During this process, the artists located the original lathe on which these items had been crafted and began to teach themselves woodturning. The forms which they made as they worked at learning a hobby become the means to support the display of the original objects, presented alongside three videos and photography.

Work in Progress (2013) immerses itself in the manufacturing industry of Markina-Xemein, the rural Basque village where Jaio comes from. A video documents the mass-production of rubber car parts, following the pieces from the assembly line in a worker-owned factory to subcontracted workshops where informal workers finish them by hand. Several of these workers are employed by the artists to cast hundreds of replicas of small modernist sculptures. These are displayed on mass-produced shelving to evoke the "Chalk Laboratory" of Basque sculptor Jorge Oteiza, a fierce critic of the commodification of art.

–

Producing time in between other things was produced as part of the Latitudes-curated Amikejo exhibition season at MUSAC, León, in 2011 and was supported by the Mondrian Foundation (now Mondrian Fonds). Work in Progress was produced with support from the Eremuak program of the Basque Government and from the Centrum Beeldende Kunst Rotterdam._

Notes for editors

Iratxe Jaio (1976, Markina-Xemein, Spain) & Klaas van Gorkum (1975, Delft, the Netherlands) live in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and have been working together since 2001. They both studied Fine Arts at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, The Hague. Their solo projects include: Réinventer le monde (autour de l'usine), FRAC Aquitaine, Bordeaux (2013); Amikejo, [curated by Latitudes], MUSAC, León (2011); Quédense dentro y cierren las ventanas / Stay inside. Close windows and doors, produced by consonni, Bilbao, and Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht; and Meanwhile, in the living room..., Centro Cultural Montehermoso, Vitoria-Gasteiz (2007). They have participated in group shows including: La Ballena Negra (The Black Whale), MARCO, Vigo; Stem Terug (Vote Back), De Appel arts centre, Amsterdam (2012); Mutual Matters, Konsthall C, Stockholm (2011); The People United Will Never Be Defeated, TENT, Rotterdam (2010); Gure Artea 2008, Sala Rekalde, Bilbao; and Wij waren in Overvecht / We were in Overvecht, Centraal Museum, Utrecht (2008).

Texts & Interviews

Jaime Cuenca, "Work at the margins", published by Sala Rekalde Erakustaretoa, February 2013.

Video of the artists presenting their 'Amikejo' exhibition at MUSAC (2011).

Paula Barriobero, "Artists at Work: Iratxe Jaio & Klaas van Gorkum", Afterall, 8 February 2012.

Max Andrews, "Focus Interview: Iratxe Jaio & Klaas van Gorkum", Frieze, Issue 157, September 2013.

More information

Download the invite/exhibition leaflet here.

For further information, please contact Claudia Segura at [email protected]

Visit

adnplatform
Avda. Can Roquetas (esquina Victor Hugo)
08173 Sant Cugat del Vallès
[email protected]
Tel. (+34) 93 451 00 64
By appointment only

Latitudes is an independent curatorial office initiated in April 2005 by Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna, that works in an international context from and in Barcelona, Spain. Latitudes initiates and develops contemporary art projects in association with institutions and collaborates with artists in productions encompassing a range of organisational forms and scales: genres of display and presentation; editorial practice and publication; forms of assembly, hosting and programming; as well as theoretical and interpretative contexts.

http://www.lttds.org