Launch 2-4pm Sat 7 December
At The Library Project
The Second Shift is the first Photobook by Northern Irish artist Clare Gallagher, whose work focuses on the ordinary, everyday experiences of home. Published as the Winner of Backlight and Jelgavas Tipogrāfia Book Award.
The Second Shift is the term given to the hidden shift of housework and childcare primarily carried out by women on top of their paid employment. It is physical, mental and emotional labour which demands effort, skill and time but is unpaid, unaccounted for, unequally distributed and largely unrecognised.
Hidden in plain sight and veiled by familiarity and insignificance, the second shift is largely absent from photographs of home and family. This work is an attempt to recognise the complexity and value of this invisible work. It is a call for resistance to the capitalist, patriarchal and aesthetic systems which ignore it.
