Hurriers: Poor on the Roll
Exhibition at Five Years

10-18 December, 2021
gallery open 12-6pm, Wednesday - Sunday
Preview: Thursday 9 December, 6-8.30pm

Zoom discussion with Feminist Library event on art and class: 11 December 2-5 pm

Art workshop on class, labour, and sexuality at Five Years. 12 December. time TBC

The Feminist Library will have a display of archive materials on class at the gallery during the show

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‘Hurriers: Poor on the Roll’ co-curated by Anne Robinson and Frances Hatherley features new work by: Anne Robinson, Charlotte Squire, Lou Barnell, Ana Bennloch, Kathleen Mullaniff, and Shaheeda Sinckler: inter-generational conversations about class, sexuality and working bodies, emerging from the collaborative processes of working on The Hurrier during 2021. The Hurrier uses experimental sound, film, performance and imaginative time travel to expand unseen historical moments in the lives of the undocumented.  At Five Years, the piece will be shown as a video installation with sound accompanied by works by all artists involved in the project. Artists will be working with Muttonfirst Press to produce ‘broadsides’ alongside the exhibition. 

The real ‘hurriers’ were women, who hauled and carried coal through narrow mine passages, through the trapper doors, on their knees, through water and up hill, until the mid nineteenth century. ‘I have a belt round my waist, and a chain passing between my legs, and I go on my hands and feet…' (Ashley Mines Commission, 1842). 

This ‘Hurrier’ is a time traveler... this ‘Hurrier’ alights in bodies, expanding time and transmitting to the future. The work was developed through collaborations with performers and makers on improvisation, props, song and film experiments, working frame by frame and in the space between: a space to escape to when your time is regulated and brutal. A no-place and a no-time.. where other things become possible. (Simon O’Sullivan on ‘fictioning’). 

Robinson’s matrilineal ancestors lived in the Scottish mining village of Dailly and throughout the 19th century, were repeatedly summoned before the ‘Kirk Sessions’ - dark Sunday afternoons where church elders compelled young women to tell them tales of sex: chastised and rebuked for the ’sin and scandal of fornication’ and for idleness. Some died in the workhouse, leaving only a record of their sexuality and debts. 

…a great deal of energy goes into inscribing, depicting, categorizing and degrading the working classes as enemy. (sociologist, Beverley Skeggs) 

The Hurrier echoes today’s class exploitation and exclusions, and the tyranny of debt. In a shocking reversals of fortune, life expectancy between rich and poor is the widening all over again… the underserving, idle poor are always with us and could easily get off the dole and get a robot job, work is violence, class a curse of empire lies. This is a song of resistance, a love song for exploited bodies.  During the show, there will be workshops, an artists’ conversation, performance and collaboration with the Feminist Library. 

Further details about the show and details of all artists’ work can be found on the project website: hurrier.org 

 

Main website for the project.
https://hurrier.org/conversations/

This page has information and links for the Feminist Library./In Process event on 11th December.
https://hurrier.org/notes-and-plans/ This page also has links to videos showing documentation of 5 screen work with main soundtrack, live score event and also a short single screen version.

The special ‘Hurrier’ episode of 'In Process' radio show went live on 13th January. You can listen to the podcast from here:
https://repeater-radio.com/shows/in-process/