Woman Makes Parts For Telephone (2019). Paper. 50x70cm framed.
Woman Makes Parts for Telephone is about the relative insignificance of the present moment within the context of the history of our universe. An organism, a speck upon a speck of time, contributing as much to the evolution of humankind. Humankind's presence within the evolution of our solar system, and the degradation of an entire planet in the blink of an eye.
I thought 2019 would be the last year on the childcare train before the youngest burst through the school gates. No more paying for the time to work to pay for the time to work etc etc. Turns out, we've got a year more to go. All fine, in the grand scheme of things, I mean... what's another year on this particular brand of treadmill? (*laugh/cry/laugh/cry*).
On one of my recent op shop visits I found a book called 'Women at Work' by photographer Lewis C Hine, a sociologist who documented the working class in post-war/s America. This particular collection was mostly about how great it was that when the menfolk were busy with the war/s they concocted, society "discovered" women and their deftly hands could indeed do lots of jobs that continued to need doing, such as making parts for things and operating machinery and basically just keeping things ticking along everywhere.
One of the photos in the book was called 'Woman Makes Parts for Telephone' (a title I have snaffled for this work). Other jobs documented by Hine included women working in the textile industry. It seemed blackly humourous, to me at least, decades later, a woman working in digital marketing for a clothing brand. I literally make parts for your telephone. Content parts, not actually the bits that make your device work, but that's a chicken and egg scenario we don't need to get into rn.
Anyway, one of the other things I do when I'm not making parts for your telephone is care for my actual children and this involves a lot of reading and learning about the earth and the universe and the history of humankind. You might already know this, but if the history of the universe was a 24-hour timeline, human beings have only existed for the final second. And given the path we're treading (not lightly), we haven't relatively long to go as a species.
So what's the significance of just one more year of pre-school, in the grand scheme of things, really? Not much. "The days are long but the years are short", they say. We'll see.
