Arts Writers is a new collaborative initiative between Glasgow International, Glasgow School of Art and The List, which sees students from the Glasgow School of Art's Master of Letters in Art Writing programme write features and reviews about works at this year's Glasgow International. The writers and critics will receive mentorship and publication via The List. The next work to be published in this series is Megan Rudden's review of the group exhibition You're Never Done.

Taking its title from the rhyming couplet 'Man may work from sun to sun, but woman's work is never done,' this group show seeks to address visibility within working class communities and question gendered notions of work. Fittingly, for an exhibition that centrally considers the sexual division of labour, the work is split into two distinct rooms; the 'pink room' and the 'blue room'.

In the pink room, sculptural works by Gabecare (Rachel Adams and Tessa Lynch) occupy the wall and floor space. A tiny collection of doll house furniture is displayed in mirrored bathroom cabinets, while oversized cleaning product packaging spills out onto white floor tiles. The distorted scale of these household items leaves the viewer oscillating between feeling very big and very small. Domesticity becomes disorientating and absurd. The film 'Gestures of Labour' by Adelita Husni-Bey moves in the silent rhythm of hand gestures, showing commercial goods being made in domestic spaces by migrant workers in Kampungs, Jakarta.

An instructional audio work by G.O.D.S (Glasgow Open Dance School) explores the text In Praise of the Dancing Body by Marxist feminist scholar Silvia Federici. The audio is activated by movement, encouraging us to consider our own bodily capacities and relationship to the space.

Springburn Library and Museum closed its doors in 2003. It has since been renovated into a private office space, and the remnants of this can be felt most prominently in the blue room, which has been adapted to accommodate the aesthetics of neo-liberal professionalism and bureaucracy. The space is fitted with navy speckled carpet and white walls, while plastic blinds conceal a glass side room built for optional privacy. 'Handle with Care' by Harriet Rose Morley sees the Springburn Maiden Statues brought out of storage and back into the public view of the blue room.

Displaying these dismantled, weathered sculptures of working women, holding on to cartwheels and trains, in this detached office setting seems to get to the heart of what this exhibition is about. The statues in the blue room highlight the changing nature of labour, so prevalent in industrial cities such as Glasgow, showing the move from factory work and heavy labour to clerical jobs and service industries. If the introduction of the railway was an anthropocentric milestone, so too was the invention of the computer and the internet.

It is fitting that these statues now sit in this building, which was originally the first independent community museum in Glasgow, built to contain the story of Springburn's industrial past, with focus on the importance of railway manufacturing to the community. The clinical feeling of the office also works to highlight the state of disrepair the statues are in. Overgrown moss and broken stone make visible the opposing interests of cultural institutions and the public, and we might wonder who's history is deemed worth maintaining. Until now these stone women, once pillars of the community hall, have been relegated to city council storage and archival neglect.

In the same room, Tara Marshall-Tierney's audio work fills the air with female voices that are at times harmonious, and other times disconnected. 'Splendid is the noise of women gathered over yonder' is influenced by the tradition of Hebridean 'waulking songs'. While the working women of the past would sing these songs while rhythmically beating cloth to soften it, this audio work was recorded entirely via Zoom call. We again are asked to consider the shift in practical, material processes to labour that takes place online or within the digital realm and the possible isolation of
this. Although they may not always match up in pitch, the voices try to stay connected; the women sing with the hope of coming together once again.

You're Never Done was originally inspired by Glasgow's public washhouses known as 'Steamies,' and hoped to take the form of an active, collaborative space where people could come together to make, chat and consider ideas of labour. However due to Covid, such a gathering of people was unable to happen, and it is perhaps this vitality and liveness that feels missing from the space.

While the exhibition does begin to deal with invisible narratives of labour, it could perhaps benefit from more direct engagement with local working class communities in order to fulfil its more collective aims of reimagining value and work. Yet to consider how working practices have shifted and adapted to circumstance is a central concern amongst the work, therefore this stillness feels apt in an exhibition that has emerged from the pause that was lockdown.

You're Never Done is available to view at Springburn Museum until Sunday 27 June.