National Gallery, London Presents "Work, Rest & Play"

The sixth National Gallery touring exhibition in partnership with Bristol's Museums, Galleries and Archives Service and Tyne & Wear Museums at Bristol's City Museum and Art Gallery, from 27 January to 15 April 2007, at Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon Tyne, from 28 April to 15 July 2007, at National Gallery, London, from 26 July to 14 October 2007.

Admission is free. The exhibition is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Northern Rock Foundation, the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and in London by The Bernard Sunley Charitable Foundation

'Work, Rest & Play' explores artists' responses to changing patterns of work and leisure over the last 400 years. The exhibition features paintings, sculpture and photographs by 25 artists including Canaletto, Gainsborough, Gauguin, Monet, Ford Madox Brown, Maggi Hambling and Renée Green. Major works from the National Gallery will be shown alongside historical and contemporary loans from UK collections.
From slavery to office culture, from unemployment to entertainment, artists have always been interested in how we are defined by what we do. The earliest painting in the exhibition is Giovanni Battista Moroni's 'The Tailor' (1565-70), one of the first portraits to show an individual at work. This work contrasts with L.S. Lowry's 'Coming from the Mill' (1930, The Lowry, Manchester), where the individual seems lost in the mass labour force of a 20th-century industrial city.

The exhibition traces the development of technology and the changing roles of women. Joseph Wright of Derby's 'An Iron Forge', (1772, Tate, London), painted at the start of the Industrial Revolution, shows the impact of rapid progress; Laura Knight's 'Ruby Loftus screwing a Breech Ring' (1943, Imperial War Museum, London) records the contribution of women who took on traditionally male roles during the Second World War.

Global office culture is depicted in a series of photographs by Lars Tunbjörk (2001, from the book 'Office'); these irreverent images include a Tokyo stockbroker asleep at his desk, and a New York lawyer's office with staff kneeling under the desk - the only spare space in the paper-strewn room.

'Work, Rest & Play' suggests that even leisure can be hard work. Duane Hanson's 'Traveller' (1988, The Saatchi Gallery, London) is an extraordinarily lifelike sculpture of a sunburnt holidaymaker slumped over his luggage as he waits for a flight home. Manet's 'Corner of a Café Concert' (1878-80), demonstrates how one person's entertainment can depend upon another's work: a man relaxes with his pipe at the bar where a dancer entertains him and a waitress serves him beer.

An education programme at all three venues, aimed at schools, families and life-long learners, will accompany the exhibition. A 20-page exhibition booklet will be available, priced £3.95. -- www.nationalgallery.org.uk