Call for Entries: Repressed IV: May Day

My friends at Gallery 5 are once again looking for artists for their annual socially conscious art exhibition...

Repressed IV: May Day
Exhibition: May 1st, 2009
Submission Deadline: March 6th, 2009

A Socially Conscious Exhibition
This year’Äôs theme: Workers Rights

This coming Repressed IV is more specific in content so we are releasing our call for entries a little sooner to give everyone a little extra time to make some new work!


SHOW DESCRIPTION:
May 1st, International Worker's Day, celebrates an ongoing, worldwide workers' struggle. Originally, the international holiday was in remembrance of the 1880's fight for an eight hour work day during a time when workers were forced to work inhumanly long hours. Nationally, we fail to recognize this holiday, which marks the famous strikes for the right to a reasonable work day by an estimated 500,000 workers. The nationally spread strikes originated in Chicago.

The resilient Chicago workers' rights leaders: Parsons, Spies, Fischer, and Engel, were executed by the United States Government in response to a bomb being thrown at a rally on May 3rd. The rally was in retaliation to acts of police brutality, leading to the deaths of six workers and several wounded during the Chicago May 1st strikes. Their lives are celebrated through International Worker's Day.

This struggle is still relevant today with issues such as: migrant workers' rights, women's equal pay for equal work, sweatshop labor, economic hit men, economic imperialism and outsourcing. People travel to places far from home and their comfort zone to show solidarity with an international struggle for the right to be treated humanly in a collapsing system. We invite all artists who are involved in this struggle to exhibit your work in our upcoming exhibition, Repressed IV: May Day.

All of the galleries in Richmond's Downtown Arts District present special exhibits on the first Friday of every month. Next May's First Fridays Art Walk happens to be on May Day. So in light of this fortuitous coincidence our May exhibition will be a celebration of workers' rights through art, education and action!

The packet with entry requirements and show description is available by
http://www.thereoncewasarebellion.org/uploads/repressedivcallpacket.pdf

Images from past shows may be found in the actions section of
http://thereoncewasarebellion.org/index.php?page=actions