In July 2019, Simon Gennard from Enjoy Contemporary Art Space approached Public Share to ask if we were interested in contributing to a publication provisionally titled ‘As needed, as possible’. Looking at ideas of labour, remuneration, collaboration and care, Public Share produced a series of page works, titled ‘No nSense: An antidote to individualism’. The page works explored Public Share’s own model – collective identity, group labour and authorship, self-funding, and a focus on ‘sharing’ over financial reward. For a second part of the project, Public Share produced a series of No nSense tumblers for events hosted at the launch of the ‘As needed, as possible’ publication in Auckland in July 2021 and Wellington in August 2021.

Public Share’s contribution to Enjoy’s digital and print publication As needed, as possible: emerging discussions on art, labour and collaboration in Aotearoa developed from a series of questions raised by Enjoy’s Assistant Curator, Simon Gennard in July 2019. With an emphasis on the social, economic and political frameworks arts practitioners and organisations occupy in contemporary Aotearoa, Simon’s initial prompts canvassed the impact that a precarious and exploitative job market has on the development of artists’ careers and wellbeing. This included consideration of the working conditions artists work under, the kinds of agency artists have to negotiate this terrain, and how they might make hostile circumstances work in their favour.

In response, Public Share produced ‘No nSense: An antidote to individualism’. No nSense discusses Public Share’s collective practice and assertion of a ‘singular multiple’ through a shared artist identity where:

…individual contributions are not credited, for our labour belongs to us all… Our horizontal means of production is an assertion of our combined values. It’s also a framework of care in which we are collectively buoyed, and risks are shared.

No nSense also provides insights into our focus on the tea break as symbolic of workers rights and the politics of pause. In this sense, we ask only that participants in our projects take a small pause – for a break, a chat, a rest. For such ‘pauses’ trace to a history of workers asserting their basic dignity and everyday rights. Ultimately the exchange creates the artwork. Through the everyday ritual of the tea break, we form a temporary community of exchange where participant are free to choose or decline participation.

Finally, as a collective, Public Share also disavows financial exchange:

There is a conscious modesty to our rationale: from creation to engagement and distribution, Public Share is counter poised against a capitalist productivist framework. The ceramic objects we make disperse with the participants; there is no monetary exchange, the “where to” and “what next” are seldom known.

Following the digital release of the various contributions to As needed, as possible, Enjoy collated those essays and page works in a print publication designed by Katie Kerr. The book was published by Enjoy and GLORIA Books.

To mark the release of the print publication of As needed, as possible: emerging discussions on art, labour and collaboration in Aotearoa, Enjoy staged two launch events, one in Auckland at Strange Goods on Saturday 24 July 2021 and another in Wellington at Enjoy on 12 August 2021.

For each launch Public Share produced over 50 individually formed No nSense tumblers. The tumblers, stamped ‘AS NEEDED, AS POSSIBLE’, were made using a combination of white stoneware clay and clay sourced in 2014 from Fulton Hogan’s Northwestern motorway construction site in Te Atatu, Auckland. The tumblers were produced for everyday use, with Public Share encouraging their new ‘owners’ to take a moment to have a break and enjoy a cuppa.

Project: No nSense

Date: April 2020; 24 July and 12 August 2021

Location: Strange Goods, 281 Karangahape Road, Auckland and Enjoy Contemporary Art Space, 211 Left Bank, Wellington

Participants:

Lot #: 024

Ceramic object: 100 tumblers

Clay source: Commercial clay and Public Share Te Atatu motorway clay

Digital publication by Enjoy Contemporary Art Space, April 2020

Print publication by Enjoy Contemporary Art Space and GLORIA Books, 2021

Launch events

Strange Goods, Auckland, 24 July 2021

Enjoy Contemporary Art Space, Wellington, 12 August 2021