Marking at The Grey Gallery, Hackney, London E8, June 2026 – Another short sharp long weekend of an art exhibition or event or whatever this one might be. Marking; An Alternative World Cup Football Memorial to give the show’s full title and perfectly timed as the excess of yet another Football World Cup and the obscenity of that FIFA Peace Prize given to that orange war starter and everything else that comes with the excess of another tournament. This rather powerful exhibition does exactly what it says on the sticker and apologies on my part for only covering the event on the evening after it has ended (in terms of the gallery part of it), we have been slightly distracted in the last week, life and all that. Really pleased I got to actually see this one though, it is still the beautiful game isn’t it? Art I mean…
Hey, A.I. how many people died during construction for the Qatar World Cup? – “The government said its accident records showed that between 2014 and 2020, there were 37 deaths among labourers at World Cup stadium construction sites, only three of which were “work-related”. However, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) says this is an underestimate”.
Respected news outlets such as The Guardian report a figure of 6500, that figure is apparently an often quoted number. France’s Le Monde reports “the estimate that 6,500 workers have died on World Cup construction sites in Qatar is a number that is quoted often, but the true figure is difficult to ascertain. In early 2021, UK newspaper The Guardian published a detailed investigation revealing that at least 6500 migrant workers in Qatar had died between 2011 and 2020. Since then, this figure of 6500 deaths has become central to the criticism of the 2022 World Cup organisation, and many have quoted it thinking that it corresponds to the number of workers who have died on the construction sites of the competition’s stadiums, or more broadly on World Cup construction sites. However, this is not quite the case.
The Guardian’s investigation, published in February 2021, focused on non-Qatari residents who had died in the country between 2011 and the end of 2020. Using death records produced by the embassies or government departments of five countries with large numbers of nationals in Qatar (India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan), the newspaper counted 6,751 confirmed deaths of workers during this 10-year period – noting that this number may have been significantly underestimated, as it did not include nationals of other countries (Philippines, Kenya etc) who were also numerous in Qatar. Deaths during the last months of 2020 and 2021 were also not included in the data collected by The Guardian. Among the causes of these deaths, one predominated: death by natural causes, accounting for 70% of the causes cited for Indian, Nepalese and Bangladeshi workers. This was partly because no autopsy or medical examination had been performed to determine the actual cause of death…”
Whatever the number, the attitude in terms of migrant workers (dare we call it slave labour?) shows up a wider disturbing attitude in terms of workers and the lower classes, workers who might be from what some might offensively see as inferior countries or cultures, attitudes shown by those in control, in power, in government and in charge of rather hypocritical organisations like football’s governing body FIFA (and their joke of a peace trophy awarded to the warmongering ICE commanding evilness that is Trump and his gang). Whether the migrant workers are building football stadiums that only the rich and famous or at least the relatively comfortable can get into or they’re building luxury hotels and second apartments in high-rise towers for those who think nothing about jetting around the globe in pursuit of entertainment the number is very very significant as we head into the next FIFA Football World Cup, this time in Trump’s USA isn’t the issue. It isn’t that an unknown worker died building a football stadium (or a hotel or a ten lane motorway or a tower block for the rich and famous to hang their art collections in), it is about all those people, those workers and who they were and what their lives were worth or indeed not worth, about all 6500 of them.
Marking is a powerful exhibition or installation or whatever you want to call it? The start of something as the hundreds of stickers now hanging in strips in the Hackney gallery fly out and about. Art and especially gallery-based art needs to come in many forms as we move into even more uncharted territories, we need things like this alongside the pretty paintings and all the dancing and prancing, we need questions to be asked, we need bites to be taken. Walking into the small space is powerful, the repetition of the one image is powerful, the sheer number of stickers all hanging there is a powerful thing. The exhibition is the work of Brendan and Kieron McSherry (of Solid Soul Design). The questions the two of them ask about infrastructure, about workers conditions, about rules and regulations, about the wider picture, the new world order, about the value of a life, about lives, are put in a very considered way here and the idea of a sticker as we collect and swap our official world cup stickers is a rather poetic one, I like that Marking happened, that it is still happening, that is an ogoing piece of art, I look forward to it evolving as those stickers get stuck on the streets or wherever people might choose to stick one, I like that things like this happen inside and hopefully outside of an art gallery and I like the the questions this threw up and throws up as we indulge in another World Cup. These things need to be marked…. (sw)
The not very often open Grey Gallery is found at 4 Helmsley Place, Hackney, London, E8 3SB. Marking has ended now, watch out for those stickers though…
Previously at Grey Gallery…
As always do click on an image to see the whole thing or to run the slide show
THE ORGAN 