“Blue Collar, Laborious Continuum” by Walker Shaw: Reflecting on Irish Men as Blue Collar Construction Workers

Irish artist Walker Shaw, who used to work in construction himself, has performed a piece titled Blue Collar, Laborious Continuum to reflect on the perception of Irish men as blue-collar construction workers. Post-war, Irish construction workers were an integral part of rebuilding Britain, Canada and the United States. The socio-economic phenomenon led to Irish men being stereotyped as construction workers, who have become poster boys for toxic masculinity.

Photograph of Walker Shaw. Image courtesy of Walker Shaw’s website.

Blue Collar, Laborious Continuum by Walker Shaw examines how the economically motivated phenomenon has created generations of stigmatized Irish men. A harsh Sisyphean way of life that has created gaps in gender equality, equality hurting Irish men and women. This is why Blue Collar, Laborious Continuum by Walker Shaw is relevant to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of Decent Work And Economic Growth, Reduced Inequalities and Gender Equality.

Before Blue Collar, Laborious Continuum is activated with a performance. The piece is a hanging sculpture where a Celtic rug that has been covered by plaster on one side hangs from a broom on the ceiling. Shaw begins the performance by wearing the rug as a cape. He then walks around the broom in circles, leaving behind a trail made of chunks of plaster. Shaw picks up the broom hanging from the ceiling and cleans up the trail he’s made, going around in circles as he does so. For every bit that he sweeps up, more chunks of plaster drop from the rug hanging around his neck, a symbol of the Sisyphean nature of harsh construction work.

As the day goes by, Shaw grows increasingly wearier and irritable, yet he persists as if his life depended on it. For the millions of Irish men who were employed in real post-war construction sites, similar labour-intensive work had been the only source of bread and butter that they had access to.

Irish construction workers on the roof of the Britannia building in Birmingham. Image courtesy of the Cowan Family and The Irish Times.

Back in 2017, an exhibition titled We Built This City took a look at the issue through the eyes of the Irish communities that helped to rebuild Birmingham, UK, after the Second World War. The exhibition worked with 35 living Irish immigrants to translate their own lived experiences as they rebuilt the city’s roads, railways, buses, hospitals, factories and more. Yvonne Price, the exhibition’s project coordinator, who herself is the child of the Irish immigrants in question, said that the resulting archive, in particular its recollection of the typical modes of transport used during the time, made the experience felt alienating; identifying exactly what Irish construction workers felt at the time.

Here, Walker Shaw's Blue Collar, Laborious Continuum becomes a protest against harsh construction work conditions everywhere. It shows how worker exploitation leads to a large number of problems that can affect generations to come. Most importantly, the artist calls for a kinder view of older Irish construction workers, whose harsh way of life had alienated them from their families and from themselves.

Find out more about Walker Shaw’s Blue Collar, Laborious Continuum and their other pieces by checking his Instagram on @artistwalkershaw.