Art Metropole

15 Jun. 2025

Book Launch: The Employee

Time

3:00-5:00 PM

Join Joshua Schwebel and Lauren Wetmore, co-editors of The Employee, for a book launch and discussion with project performer Camille-Zoé Valcourt-Synnott and Adi Berardini, Executive Director of Forest City Gallery. Along with a presentation of The Employee we will discuss how cultural work, artistic livelihoods, and arts funding intertwine with artist-run culture.

The Employee is a publication of critical texts and first-person testimonials by artists and cultural workers reflecting on the links between public funding, artistic commitment, and self-exploitation in their practices and labour contexts.

The book is edited by Joshua Schwebel and Lauren Wetmore and includes contributions by the editors, Mariane Bourcheix-Laporte, Teresa Carlesimo, Bopha Chhay, Dana Kopel, Michelle Lacombe, Denise Ryner, Camille-Zoé Valcourt-Synnott, and Marina Vishmidt, with graphic design by House9.

The Employee emerges from its namesake artwork, a conceptual project of institutional critique by Joshua Schwebel that took place at Forest City Gallery in London, ON (2020-2021). FCG is one of Canada’s first artist-run centres and has been publicly funded for almost 50 years, yet is staffed by a single, part-time employee whose disproportionate workload is not uncommon in the sector. To realize The Employee, Schwebel obtained funding from the Canada Council for the Arts to hire a performer, delegated to write funding applications on behalf of FCG, as a structural and performative reflection on the ambivalent and extractive echoes between art, work, and reproductive labour. Ultimately, none of the employee’s grant applications were successful.

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Joshua Schwebel is an artist who works through transactions, interventions, and writing to distress the contradictions of institutionalized contemporary art. Most recently his work has been exhibited at Clark gallery, the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Joliette, the Libby Leshgold Gallery, and KW Berlin.

Lauren Wetmore is a Canadian curator, writer, and editor based in Brussels. She is Director of Programs at Momus and has contributed to exhibitions, publications, and commissioning programs internationally.

Camille-Zoé Valcourt-Synnott is a multidisciplinary artist and arts worker whose performances and text-based works have been shown in artist-run centres and galleries across Canada.

Adi Berardini (she/they) is an artist, writer, and editor. She has an MA in Art History from Western University and a BFA in Cultural + Critical Practice from Emily Carr University. Currently, she works as the Executive Director of Forest City Gallery (London, ON). She is the founder and editor of the publication Femme Art Review, which provides space for women and LGBTQ2S+ writers to reflect on art and culture.

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