THE CLEANER: Lily Zee Hughes' project on artists and their second jobs
Lily Zee Hughes creates The Cleaner project based on research from artists with second jobs
“Caution: Artists operating as cleaners in this area”
A sticker cut into the shape of a ‘wet floor’ sign attached to a lamppost in Cliftonville, Margate, did its job in catching attention.
Lily Zee Hughes (@lilyzhughes) moved to the area five years ago and spent almost three of them as a cleaner in Airbnb rentals to support her career as an artist. And, while Lily now works some 40 hours a week in a kitchen, the kernel of an idea had formed during the years of clearing up the mess left by holidaymakers.
“I kind of realised I had all this material that I’ve been working on and not really considering,” she says. “I keep sketchbooks and I was writing and drawing while I was at work. I ended up making pictures of things that were kind of odd. There’s this book called Dig Where You Stand, which is all about researching your workplace and archiving these lesser, everyday scenarios.”
Earlier this year, Lily took her first-ever solo show to The Shop Front community gallery in Cliftonville. Entitled The Cleaner, it was a small folio of drawings and mono prints displaying forgotten underwear, screwed-up tissues and, of course, the linocut of the ‘wet floor’ sign that we saw on the lamppost.
“I made it because I had this weird, uncomfortable feeling about being an artist and working as a cleaner and I almost wanted to put up a sign to say ‘Yeah, I’m an artist and I am also operating as a cleaner’.”
Rather than being the culmination of work, the Shop Front exhibition was the starting point of a much wider project.
“I had this feeling of contentment that I don’t think I’d ever had before,” she says. “It was quite odd - five years of studying, three years of being an artist, and it had all come together. It felt like a real start of something.”
Under the conceptual framework she had created, Lily went about adding a research element to the project by creating an online survey asking artists from Margate and beyond to tell her about their second jobs - with more than 100 answering the call-out.
The results of the survey formed the basis of Lily’s second show at Salon gallery in Margate in October this year.
“Loads of artists have got second jobs and loads of people said ‘I can’t believe no one’s talking about this!’.
“Loads of people said they haven’t got any money and haven’t got any time.
“I found that 10% of people I asked also worked as cleaners and I’ve a breakdown of all the other jobs - but most people work in hospitality or teaching.”
Lily also asked people to rate their life satisfaction and their financial stability.
“One of the big ones was I asked whether people earn more as an artist or in their second job,” she says. “So I’ve got a nice pie chart with a very small piece of the pie for the people that said they actually earn more as an artist.”
The show, which featured stats and quotes, was also littered with artworks such as ceramic versions of the classic-coloured microfibre cloths and the ‘wet floor’ sign.
There is, of course, a huge irony in holidaymakers visiting Margate to experience the thriving creative-led scene only for their Airbnb to be cleaned by a struggling artist.
“One of the key pieces that’s in the show is a T-shirt I made to wear to work that says ‘The Cleaner’ on it because if I bumped into guests they’d say ‘Oh, are you the owner? What a beautiful property you have!’. And I found it quite uncomfortable because I don’t own anything, you know. I rent my flat, I rent my studio, and it felt weird to me that they would assume that the person in cleaning was the person that owned, so I started wearing this T-shirt to kind of label myself. And that’s how it all started.”
At the autumn show, Lily also conducted surveys with the idea of future shows and collaborations with other second-job artists.
“It’s gone from being something where I thought if I do this it’s going to have a full stop to now it’s just gotten bigger and bigger,” says Lily. “I was amazed how similar everyone else’s experience was to my own. I almost thought there would be a bunch of people out there who were having a better time at trying to manage these things.
“I think that’s something that was quite widespread. It’s almost like why are we doing this? Why are we forcing ourselves to be artists when we’re just so tired? But I guess it’s just something you’ve got to do.”
INFO: lilyzhughes.com
