Known for her futuristic experimental dramas and scripted performances, Melanie Gilligan’s work offers chillingly incisive – and often humorous – narratives centred on the power of economic relations to shape lives. Working in collaboration with the School of History of Art, we invited Gilligan to create a new live presentation for the University of Edinburgh’s Playfair Library.
Shaped responds to the themes of a larger ECA research project focusing on care work and other forms of ‘social reproduction’ – in other words, everything that relates to how we live, survive and thrive, from childrearing and cleaning to housing and healthcare. Addressing our current predicament, Gilligan’s presentation considers the impact on the social fabric as the costs associated with reproducing workers and societies are increasingly shifted from the public to private sphere. The event acted as a precursor to Gilligan’s inclusion in British Art Show 8, a major exhibition which toured to Edinburgh in February 2016.
Melanie Gilligan lives and works in London and New York. Her films include Crisis in the Credit System (2008), a four-part fictional mini-drama about the recent financial crisis, made specifically for internet viewing and distribution, commissioned and produced by Artangel Interaction; Self-capital (2009), commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Arts London as part of the group exhibition Talk Show; and Popular Unrest (2010). Critical writing is central to Gilligan’s practice, and she has contributed to art magazines and journals such as Texte zur Kunst and Artforum. In 2009 she was the recipient of a Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists and, in 2010, of the Present-Future Prize at Torino Artissima International Art Fair.
Use the arrow keys below to scroll through the slideshow of documentation images:
