Maintenance Art 2021, or: Maintenance is a drag, it takes all the fucking time

Since 1911, the construction company McCorquodale and Son has provided maintenance and repair work to various homes across Glasgow, passed down and managed by every son in the family for 110 years. Craig McCorquodale - the last son and an artist - breaks this line of succession, severing the sequence.

‘Maintenance Art 2021, or: Maintenance is a drag, it takes all the fucking time’ is therefore an attempt at colliding different modes of work to discover if art can happen on the spaces he’s been born into. Inspired by Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ ‘Touch Sanitation’, and working in collaboration with Flannery O’Kafka, Craig McCorquodale momentarily plays boss at McCorquodale and Son by asking his Dad, Uncle and the male workers to pause their maintenance work to progress his.

Irreverent and resourceful, the invitation to stand before a camera and be gazed upon in a gallery asks questions of entitlement, otherness, work and play. Conjuring images redolent of sacrifice and somewhere between vulnerability and force, we see people with and through archetypes and encounter an uncanny portrait of masculinities. Part family album, part workplace calendar, this new exhibition is witty, arresting and evocative, as we see men drop their tools, show their skin and change hands.

Concept and Lead Artist: Craig McCorquodale
Collaborating Artist: Flannery O’kafka
Co-created with: Robert Dingwall, Thomas MacDonald, Tony McCusker, Eddie Brady, Dylan Kirkwood, John Parker, Colin McCorquodale and Gavin McCorquodale
Production support: Jolene Crawford
Graphic Designer for accompanying print: Andrew J Beltran

Presented at Zeitraumexit in Mannheim, Germany as part of Wunder der Prärie Festival 2021.

With thanks to Jerwood Arts.

This work is available for touring and development, both as an installed exhibition and new performance iterations. For full details, get in touch.