Work and Leisure International

Work & Leisure International partners – Paulette Terry Brien and Laurence Lane – describe how their organisation has evolved over ten years of working together and with artists. 

< Fabienne Audéoud, ‘De-learning to play the piano’, 1999.
Photo: Graeme Cooper.

We initially started working together as a continuation of The Quarter Club, an artist-led initiative set up in 1988 to facilitate Manchester artists making time-based art. In November 1998, after a period of successful period of fundraising, we re-launched as Work & Leisure International with an approach to working with artists that has expanded to include commissioning, curating exhibitions, producing publications and a commitment to Manchester as a centre for the presentation and creation of contemporary art.

From 1992 to 1998 we operated from an office base at The Green Room, a contemporary arts centre in Manchester. With minimal funding and mostly borrowed resources our activities centred on creating opportunities for newly practicing artists to present their existing work. Throughout this time we organised a series of multiple artform events where emerging artists presented live performances, installations, soundworks, DJ sets and screenings of short film and video. Initially these took place at The Green Room with work being presented in its studio theatre, bar and exhibition space. In addition to working with Manchester artists we also made links with organisations such as Hull Time Based Arts, ICA, London and CCA, Glasgow, as well as with a number of artist-led projects in Nottingham, Leicester, London and Liverpool.

Between 1993 and 1997 we expanded our activity to include a series of events that took place outside of the arts centre context. T.V.O.D. (1993-1994) and The Savage Club (1996-1997) were informal evening events held in two city-centre cafe-bars in Manchester where we presented live, installed and screened works by, amongst others, Laurence Lane, Nick Crowe, Graham Parker, Owada, Phil Collins, Akiko Hada, Hayley Newman and Matt Wand. In this relaxed atmosphere artists could try out new ideas for audiences of some 100 to 200 people. For T.V.O.D. money was raised by charging a small entrance fee to cover the venue hire and distribution of invitations. For The Savage Club we received some Arts Council of England funding to enable us to raise the profile of the events through expanded marketing and increased engagement with the existing infrastructures for visual art.

In 1997 we extended our activity to include commissioning new work. In partnership with Hull Time Based Arts we presented Metropola by Susan Philipsz where the artist sang a cappella over the public address system of Tesco Metro supermarket in Manchester city centre, and Untitled experiments by Howard Matthew, a two-hour lecture demonstrating self-designed anti-gravity equipment presented in an artists' project space in the city.

At this time, Manchester still had very few outlets dedicated to contemporary art. However, other artists in the city had started to set up their own independent initiatives and we found that we all had a common interest in innovative contemporary art and a commitment to making Manchester a better place for artists. Motivated by this increased energy and ambition, and by working directly with The Annual Programme who had opened a gallery space, we were able to further explore the contexts within which we presented work, and to expand our audience within the city. With increased funding we were able to continue to commission new work focusing on facilitating artists' ideas in whatever contexts were deemed appropriate – rather than prescribing where and for how long the work should be presented.

Since 1999, Work & Leisure International has commissioned twelve new works, including Strip tease by Susan Philipsz, a site-specific installation for a gallery space; Rollin' along by Matt Stokes, a sited video projection presented in a side street, a shop window and on a pub wall; Square city by Graham Parker, a residency project for the grid square 96N 84E of Manchester city centre and, most recently Abstract painting by Fabienne Audéoud and John Russell, an exhibition of paintings and opening night performance which took place at The International 3, the flexible exhibition space that we opened in partnership with The Annual Programme. Operating from this new base (opened in June 2000), we continue our interest in presenting a broad range of contemporary art in a range of contexts and with our collaborations with other organisations and curators. With artist David Mackintosh we curated 'My eye hurts', a twelve-hour exhibition and event of sound artists and art bands presented in Manchester and New York, whilst more recently working with Autograph and The Annual Programme on Small talk by Janette Parris, a work for a stand-up comedian. Future projects will include a collaboration with three artists from Reykjavik, Marseilles and Manchester, an exhibition of artists work on 7" single with commissioned pieces by Die Kunst, Matt Wand and Hayley Newman and an accompanying live sound event to be hosted by Manchester Art Gallery.

First published in:a-n Magazine May 2002