Kay Abude, Smoko room (presented as part of the 2023 Paul Selzer Prize), 2023, video still of performance and installation, dimensions variable
Kay Abude recreates in a gallery the table from the wharf where she works.
It’s break time for the workers of CARGO XXV – LABOUR SOLUTIONS, a crew of 10 working for a fictional shipping company. They have paused from discharging cargo from a vessel to have a well-earned rest in the company’s smoko room, a place where conversation knows no limits and everyone has an opinion. But there isn’t anything fictional about the jobs these workers really do. They are stevedores for whom the smoko room is a safe haven from their high-risk labour at the docks in Melbourne.
This piece continues my work exploring work itself: the value of it, the effort, the inequality and insecurity of it, especially for artists. These performers are my colleagues, and the smoko room is one that I have sat in many times before. Since February 2022, after leaving the precarity of sessional teaching in the university sector, I have worked as a stevedore to support my art practice.
The wharf is unlike any workplace I have experienced. It is a high-risk environment where the workers openly and constantly challenge management because it’s our lives at risk on a daily basis. It’s always us against them; where 24/7 shift work is all-consuming; where there is boat after boat or none at all; where profanities and verbal abuse are the only form of communication; where, in a strange and shocking way, bullying is a form of endearment; where gossip spreads like wildfire and where women make up less than 12% of the entire workforce.
Smoko room celebrates all of this: the nature of individual work and collective labour, the sometimes cruel dynamics of a team and the rarely-seen bodies that economies rely on to keep pushing ever-forward. It blurs boundaries, presenting life as art, and art as life through a performance by a real and skilled waterfront workforce: wharfies who are being remunerated for their time at their designated rate, and whose pay levels reflect their position on the labour placement sheet. There may be a hierarchy at the docks but in the smoko room, we are all together.
Kay Abude, Smoko room (presented as part of the 2023 Paul Selzer Prize), 2023, video still of performance and installation, dimensions variable
✿ How did the men respond to your invitation to be part of the installation?
They were pretty casual about it and curious enough to agree! I also used my artist fee to pay them the labour rates that they would receive at work, so they were being remunerated for their time.
✿ How did the table in the gallery compare to the one at the docks?
The table installed in the gallery mirrored the table set up at one of our sites at the docks, in which smaller tables are joined together to form a larger rectangular table in the centre of a space. A TV mounted on a wall at one end of the table, fluorescent lighting above, and chairs scattered around the table were elements installed in the gallery that mimic the environment of the lunch room at the docks.
✿ What are the rules of the table? Do you have to engage with others? Should you clean up after yourself?
No bags or boots on the table are the only rules of the table. Some of us put our lunch bags on the table which is acceptable and appropriate smoko room etiquette, although all of us follow the rule of not putting our boots on the table because doing that would be gross, and disrespectful, and would also bring bad luck! And working in a high-risk environment, you don’t want to do anything at work to jinx yourself!
✿ Did being part of the installation change the way the men treat you back at work?
Yes, they now always ask me about my art, what I’m working on and what I’m thinking about – how does working on the wharf inform my creative practice? Some of them also ask if and when we can all get together again to perform Smoko Room in another art gallery in its next iteration!
Kay Abude would like to thank the following people for their involvement and support in her project: Flick Szmagaj, Gregory Stanley, Robbie Zidarich, Campbell Dwyer, Matty Waymouth, James Horo, Dylan Aquilina, Benny Pepa, Ersin Selek, Rob Smith, Shannon Smith, Marco Rinaldi, Dewi Cooke, Joon Youn, David Sequeira, Mia Salsjö and Anthony Frazzetto.
