by Bri Lee’s first novel, The Work, is torn between two books. One is a half-hearted question of capital and power and their influence on art, told through millennial characters whose trash and privilege speak for those who control the creative industries. The other is a modern romance between two people who have a mutual love of art, in a novel that mainly deals with art and artists as a seductive but unquestioning backdrop; like a painting in a restaurant.
Lee’s other works – the infamous Eggshell Skull and two follow-ups, Beauty and Who Gets to Be Smart – are all memorable works of non-fiction, respectively tackling Australia’s inadequate justice system for sexual assault and rape survivors, standards beauties and institutions, and correlations between. privilege and knowledge. Infusing fiction, Lee brings her familiarity with socio-cultural issues – and parts of herself again, as she stated – to The Work, using the lens of gender inequality, power and class to to scrutinize the owners and profiteers of the cultural sector.
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Whether this novel succeeds is another question. The Work, split between New York and Sydney, is between two characters: Lally, a thirty-something American owner, focused on a contemporary gallery career in Manhattan; and Patrick, a disabled Australian, in his late 20s from regional Queensland who now works as a junior appraiser at a prominent antiquities company in Sydney. Both of them worked hard for their success, and both of them unconsciously lie about the certain privileges that belong to them: “unexpected inheritance”; male privilege.
The novel’s tension arises from Lally and Pádraig’s relationship (they get cute together through work, exchange flirty banter, have lots of sex) along with their emerging career mistakes. Lally, in her attempt to feed “what the market was hungry for”, commissions an installation with the controversial artist Chuck Farr, which she continues despite historical allegations of coercion against him by several male models. Meanwhile, Patrick finds himself in a precarious position after having sex with his first big client, a divorcee who wants to protect her ex-husband’s assets.
Art is not the focus of the Work; Lee himself says it’s more about “real estate”. That is true, and the novel is compelling in its portrayal of the market’s ever-changing perceptions of cultural value, our gendered ideals of creativity, and the machinery that distributes and profits from it. He himself is aware of a functional currency in “young and diverse” artists – Lally bats not pushing the “destroyed-immigrant-son” angle for a photographic series – with the characters of the novel commensurate with the inequalities of their industry while still in there to stand with them. with them.
However, the novel’s clean handling of the art detracts from the story. There are moments when he resolutely engages with his ethics and politics, for example when Lally argues with the moral ambiguity of Farr’s provocative video work. But a lazy vagueness creeps in: Farr’s work meets “that sweet spot in Lally’s aesthetic-intellectual interior”; Many conversations are circular, platitudinous. Characters also often refer simply to “art”, unattached from any medium or idea:
‘Do most of your friends do other types of work?’ she asked.
‘You mean non-art?’
‘Yes. There’s art, and then there’s everything else.’
Are these satirical jabs at industry cliches or authoritarian flatness? Who knows. But since Lally and Pat’s new romance is underpinned by a passion for artistic expression, we’re left a little bored.
Does sex stir things up? You’d expect it, but for a book with such a relentless horn – which Lee says is aimed at challenging the male-dominated canon – so much of its eroticism, though that it is honest and obvious, tending towards the comic. We jump from jarring descriptions (breasts like “panna cottas”) to prose deadened by anatomical specificity: “She took her left hand, put it on her breast, climbed on it, and put her right hand on her ass.” Lines like “Lally felt desperate … to find their physical in info with their intellectual” events all sensuality of updating to iCloud.
In The Work, neither Lally nor Patrick face any real consequences for their sins. They don’t have to, of course, but its function in the novel feels less like a triumph of familiarity with the reality of the art sector than something simply demanded for the sake of the love story. Indeed, the novel’s ending with a bow – admittedly an authentic depiction of a modern relationship ending – negates any claim it might have as a barbed skewering of money and power. Ultimately, this is a cleanly written if clunky “give the market what it needs” romp – a book that tries to tick too many boxes.
