Gary Gilpatrick, Insulator, from the series "Lunch Break"

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Artist Document Files\Artist I thru L\Lockhart, Sharon\Videos\In Context 2014\In Context.mp4

Artist/Maker Sharon Lockhart (American, born 1964)

Date2008

MediumThree chromogenic prints

DimensionsSheet (each): 24 × 30 in. (61 × 76.2 cm) Frame (each): 25 1/8 × 31 1/8 × 2 in. (63.8 × 79.1 × 5.1 cm)

Credit LinePurchase, William G. Roehrick '34 Art Acquisition and Preservation Fund

Object number2014.1.a-c

Not on view

DescriptionSharon Lockhart is a Los Angeles–based photographer and filmmaker. For her projects, which often incorporate both still photography and film, she typically immerses herself in a community over a long period of time, eventually creating work with the community’s trust and collaboration. In 2008, over the course of a year, Lockhart made the films Lunch Break and Exit, featuring the workers of the Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine—the state’s largest employer, founded in 1884—as well as three accompanying series of photographs. During Lunch Break’s eighty-three minutes (extended in slow motion from eleven minutes of shooting), the camera moves along a corridor that stretches the length of a shipyard, recording the human interactions and activities that occur among a group of highly skilled blue-collar workers. The artist focused on the midday break as a moment of social engagement within the capitalist structure of labor—a disappearing ritual as more and more plants stagger lunch shifts to increase productivity. Of the photographs, eighteen, including this triptych, are still lifes showing particular workers’ lunchboxes and their contents in fastidious detail, amounting to psychological portraits of their owners. Gary Gilpatrick, Insulator includes such details as its owner’s cigarettes and medications, a newspaper, and a magnifying glass and pencil for completing the daily crossword puzzle. The triptych was included in the Wellin’s Spring 2013 exhibition In Context: The Portrait in Contemporary Photographic Practice, curated by Assistant Professor of Art Robert Knight, and was purchased for the collection once the exhibition had concluded. (SOURCE: Alcauskas, INNOVATIVE APPROACHES, HONORED TRADITIONS, 2017) Belongs to the series "Lunch Break" in which Lockhart presents the social dimensions of blue-collar workers at the Bath Iron Works through photographs of workers socializing during their breaks, still-lifes of their lunch boxes and the snack shops workers frequent. Collectively, "Lunch Break " reveals the fraught relationship between Lockhart's subjects and the postindustrial global economy, where blue-collar workers find themselves in an increasingly unstable and perilous bargaining position.

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Additional Details

Exhibition History 2017
Clinton, NY (Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art, Hamilton College). "Innovative Approaches, Honored Traditions: The Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Five Years, Highlights from the Permanent Collection," September 9 - December 10, 2017 (cat. no. 127, illus.);

2014
Clinton, NY (Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art, Hamilton College). "In Context: The Portrait in Contemporary Photographic Practice," February 1 - July 27, 2014.

Provenance 2014: Hamilton College (Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art), by purchase from Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, CA.

Markings No markings noted.

Published References Katherine D. Alcauskas, INNOVATIVE APPROACHES, HONORED TRADITIONS: THE RUTH AND ELMER WELLIN MUSEUM OF ART AT FIVE YEARS, HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE PERMANENT COLLECTION (Clinton, NY: Wellin Museum of Art, 2017), p. 276;

IN CONTEXT: THE PORTRAIT IN CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHIC PRACTICE (exh. cat. Clinton, NY: Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art, 2014), 64, illus. 67.

Signature Not signed.

Inscribed No inscriptions noted.