THE OBJECT OF LABOR Art, Cloth, and Cultural Production

Cambridge / London: The MIT Press, 2007. (USA) 1st printing. No markings, Fine in Fine dust jacket. Hardcover, 408pp, index, colour and B&W photos and illus. The book starts of with Maureen Sherlock's horrendous account of the deaths of 200 yound women in the New York factory fire From the jacket: The Object of Labor explores the personal, political, social, and economic meaning of work in the context of art and textile production. The ubiquity of cloth in everyday life, the historically resonant relationship of textile and cloth to labor, and the tumultuous drive of globalization make the issues raised by this pubication of special interest today. The seventeen essays cover topics ranging from art-making practices to labor history and the effects of globalization as seen through art and labor. The artists' projects—twelve striking and beautiful eight-page, full color spreads—conduct parallel investigations into art, cloth, and work.The contributors explore, from historical and personal perspectives, such subjects as the charged history of offshore garment workers; the different systems of production and consumption in factories, homes, studios, and exhibitions; the revelation of class, gender, and sexuality through cloth, costume, and textile images; textile production as commemorative acts in South Africa, the United States, and India; transnationalism, cultural hybridity, and race in the work of individual artists; lost histories of garment production and embroidery; the physical act of art-making as labor; and the value of handmade and "technologically improved" objects. A heavy book (4.0 JM LVR 205/b2. 1st. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. Illus. by Taylor, Anne. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾".