Hard Graft: Exposing the impact of physical labour on health and rights
Story by Leila Hawkins
Photo by Kelly O’Brien / Cleaner No. 01, 2022, cropped / courtesy of the artist / Wellcome Collection
The Covid-19 pandemic prompted something of a global reckoning with the world of work, causing many people to rethink their relationship with their jobs. The existential threat posed by an unknown virus meant that aspirations of climbing corporate ladders were replaced with reflections on whether any of it is worth it at all, especially given that — with the exception of a few lucky people — we spend a third of our lives doing jobs we don’t love to be able to pay the bills, with these becoming increasingly difficult due to rising inflation and the cost of living. Yet society is built in such a way that we must feel gratitude for the benefit of working to barely make ends meet.
of the artist/ Wellcome Collection
The pandemic also led to a reassessment of ‘essential work’ — the work of cashiers, bus drivers and nurses who keep our towns and cities running and involve some of the longest hours and hardest labour, but are among the most criminally underpaid.
The Wellcome Collection’s exhibition ‘Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights’, is a comprehensive, enlightening look at the world of physical labour past and present that explores how valuable work is often undervalued and exploited.
Split broadly into themes of slavery, sex work and care work, it doesn’t shy away from comparing the inhumane conditions of slave workers on plantations to modern-day prison labour. (According to the ACLU, incarcerated workers are a huge asset to the economy, producing more than $2 billion per year in goods and more than $9 billion per year in services for the maintenance of the prisons, as the government takes up to 80% of their wages for ‘room and board’, court costs, restitution, building and sustaining prisons.)
Looking Inside – Portraits of Women Serving Life Sentences (Assia), 2018. Courtesy of the artist / Wellcome Collection
Sara Bennett’s photographs of women serving life sentences in New York state prisons are among the most poignant exhibits, featured alongside their handwritten narratives, some of which are unexpectedly uplifting. “Despite the bad choices that landed me in prison and away from my own children who have had to grow up without me, I can still make a difference,” reads a note by Assia, a nursery aide and doula at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility.
Another highlight is the display dedicated to the English Collective of Prostitutes’ landmark 1982 campaign to end the police harassment of sex workers in the King’s Cross area of London, at the time one of the city’s main red light districts. The group squatted the Holy Cross Church for 12 days with a very simple message: ‘mothers need money’. Women criminalised for sex work had children to support. The campaign was successful, and marked the start of the UK’s modern sex workers’ rights movement.
cotton, wire & found objects). Photo by Kibwe Brathwaite / Wellcome Collection
The treatment of domestic workers, and the emotional and physical impact of performing unpaid housework and care work are also spotlighted. A display is dedicated to the International Wages for Housework movement, the first campaign to demand compensation for women’s unpaid yet vital care work, which has since evolved into Care Income Now and inspired many more movements around the globe.
Through this collection of more than 150 items, including historical objects, installations and artworks, Hard Graft is a sharp appraisal of the value of physical work and the capitalist structures that perpetuate exploitation.
‘Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights’ is on at the Wellcome Collection in London until April 27, 2025.
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