For Love Or Money – Exhibition to Explore Artistic Labour

The latest exhibition at Hawthorn’s Town Hall Gallery For Love or Money, examines the economic structures that underpin artistic labour and how artists sustain their practices within broader capitalist systems.

Guest curated by Sophia Cai in collaboration with Town Hall Gallery, For Love or Money explores ideas related to work, emotional labour and artistic value, through the work of nine Australian artists and art collectives: Kay Abude, Artists' Subcommittee (Nina Ross and Gabrielle de Vietri), Shannon Lyons, Make or Break (Rebecca Gallo and Connie Anthes), James Nguyen, Steven Rhall, Elvis Richardson, Abdullah M. I. Syed and Salote Tawale.

For Love or Money questions the relationship between work, making art and making it work as an artist. Across the exhibition there are elements of humour and playfulness, contrasted with works that are more critical in their questioning of the notions of value.

For Love or Money uses artistic interventions to critically examine the complex relationship between artistic work, labour, and value. The artists in this exhibition turn their attention to what is the often unseen labour of artistic creation and output, while also acknowledging the art world is part of larger social and economic systems.