LESS STRESS

Exhibition identity for Killkenny Arts Office, reflecting the exhibitions theme for professional precarity for artists

We designed the promotional material to reflect the exhibitions theme. The stress attatched to working as an artist, gets converted into successful objects. Along with Jamie Smyth, we designed the colour and text surrounding the school textbook of the same title. We created a series of rock stacks which are intended to reflect converting stress into success.

In an Irish context, the phrase Less Stress More Success evokes an immediate, and dreaded, memory of stacked study aids for the State Examinations. These publications were designed to condense and organise information with a purpose to make “those study hours really pay!” A shortcut to success, assuring the most productivity in the least stressful manner. On leaving school and entering working life, this mantra for achievement seems to be quickly abandoned.

Now, more so than ever, it is evident that the profession of the artist in a capitalist society is maintained by stress success. The artist becomes a hyper worker, surviving on a rotation of grant applications and pressing deadlines that often dominate over artistic practice. This gig-based employment equates to periods of high productivity and unpredictability in work. The result sees the boundaries between life and work blurred and collapse into senselessness multi-tasking. This unsustainable approach leaves an art community anxious, exhausted and envious.

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