Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge: Working Culture

This overview of the art practice of Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge features a selection of major photographic projects spanning their thirty-year career working with organised labour and issues emerging in the wake of rapid global economic changes.  The show begins with the drawing series titled It’s Still Privileged Art? from 1975 when the artists – under the influence of Art & Language and the nascent conceptual art movement – turned from formalist art-making to social engagement, and from solo expression to committed artistic collaboration with a focus on social aesthetics.  Over the decades, Condé and Beveridge’s formulation of leftist political discourses, combined with their innovations in artistic form, reflect their on-going commitment to their practice as a tool for social awareness and community formation.

Working Culture includes an award-winning short documentary video on the artists’ practice by filmmakers Roz Owen and Jim Miller.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the NSCAD Press, in association with the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, has published Condé and Beveridge: Class Works, the first comprehensive examination of their collaborative art practice. Edited by Bruce Barber, Class Works includes critical essays by Jan Allen, D’Arcy Martin, Declan McGonagle, Allan Sekula, and Dot Tuer; an extensive interview by Clive Robertson with Condé and Beveridge; a chronology of their extraordinary art practice; and 112 colour reproductions that illustrate their major photographic projects. 

Organized and circulated by the Agnes Etherington Art Centre with the support of the Industrial Relations Centre, Queen's University; the Canada Council for the Arts; the Ontario Arts Council; and the Kingston Arts Council.