<b>CAKE-STAND ART:</b> “Stockpile,” by Allison Smith, will be one of the pieces in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s Labour and Wait exhibition.
Courtesy Photo

Labour and Wait is a major contemporary art show that will occupy several galleries in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art from July 2 through September 22. The show examines the trend in art since the 1990s of returning to the 19th-century values of the handcrafted and artisanal, but doing so with a distinctly 21st-century vision and urgency. The show’s title is from a poem by Longfellow that endorses the notion that humans do best when they are active, but that includes patience as a virtue alongside industry:

Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labour and to wait.

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from A Psalm of Life

Curator Julie Joyce has scoured the globe in search of contemporary artists who in some way engage issues of authenticity and handcrafting, and whose work examines the politics of manufacturing and labor. Artists in the show include Tonico Lemos Auad, Andrea Bowers, Colin Darke, Wim Delvoye, Theaster Gates, Dewar & Gicquel, Fischli and Weiss, Tim Hawkinson, Josiah McElheny, Grayson Perry, Mika Rottenberg, Allison Smith, Ricky Swallow, David Thorpe, and Jane Wilbraham.

More Visual Art

Twins, a juried exhibition of multimedia art. At the Santa Barbara Tennis Club through Friday, July 5.

Specimen, objects of curiosity. At the Arts Fund Gallery, Saturday, June 29-Saturday, August 10.

Unbuilt Santa Barbara, architectural drawings of unrealized projects. At the UCSB Art, Design & Architecture Museum @ Jane Deering Gallery through Saturday, September 7.

Peake/Picasso, a friendship between artists. At the UCSB Art, Design and Architecture Museum, Saturday, July 13-Sunday, September 22.

Unbuilt UCSB. At the UCSB Art, Design and Architecture Museum, Saturday, July 13-Sunday, September 22.

W. Diblee Hoyt: Far Reaches, a juried photo exhibition of work by a teacher and his students. At the Channing Peake Gallery in the S.B. County Administration Building through Friday, September 20.

Jennifer Greenburg: Revising History, black and white photos. At wall space gallery, through Sunday, July 14.

Login

Please note this login is to submit events or press releases. Use this page here to login for your Independent subscription

Not a member? Sign up here.