(studio visit)
Ghislaine Leung
2.1.1
London, April 2026
How to do a studio visit with an artist who has no studio?
The text here began with an invitation, in which I wrote and expressed fandom, but also, suggested that in a magazine that focuses on making, the way Leung talks structurally about how to make making art possible is an important perspective. Leung responded by describing her sub scores, which she described as a kind of anti-performance, ‘an ongoing attempt to prioritise reproductive as equal to productive labour in a way’. Leung explained that these are ‘the backbone of the practice, where the scores, the writing, the work as a labour, comes from.’
Her email ended with an invitation – ‘See below. Maybe you, and I, could write around these?’ – to which I responded with a text, or more like notes, or a response. We’ve exchanged over a dozen emails, discussed the weather, still have never met, but I have been thinking about these scores for weeks now, and how they make work possible, labour visible, process palpable. The photo above is an empty corner in my bedroom. The photos below, from Maintenance (2025), another space left empty. For the rest, well, see below:
Orit Gat
Ghislaine Leung
Sub Scores, 2015–2025
SAY NO Alarm, daily at 10am.
2015–2017
Make work vulnerably. No defense.
2015
Don’t prejudge the work. No ideas.
2015
If it makes you laugh, you have to do it.
2016
IS not AS. What is already here.
2016
Don’t make anything you have
to store. If you do, make it small.
2016
Don’t make anything you have to ship.
If you do, don’t cover shipping.
2016
Don’t cover any production or
fabrication costs. Use what’s around.
2016
Don’t pay for travel or accommodation.
If they can’t pay, just don’t go.
2016
No more openings. You know why.
Go if you must but understand
the consequences.
2016
Know your burn time.
2016
No more interpretation. Only
materials. Write what the show is.
2016–2022
No images of the works before
the show. If you have to send an
image then send the title of the show.
2016–2021
No more art fairs. Take a holiday the
week the art fair comes to town.
2017
No artist’s portrait supplied and no
images or video requested. Audio is
fine. Livestream is fine.
2017
No website. Don’t start what you can’t
keep up. If you have to have a social
media account, then don’t post.
2018
Remember to ask for a fee. You know
some places can’t afford them, but
some places can.
2018
Don’t read reviews or features if you
can help it. This isn’t about external
validation.
2018
Don’t take on an external studio. If
you can make work anywhere, you
might be able to keep making work.
2019
No studio visits. Go to a cafe or take a walk.
Exit the presentation.
2019
Be too close, proximate, and thigh
deep. Low performance.
2020
Work your hours. They will call if they
need you. You don’t have to answer.
2020
Send the same text for all general
exhibition catalogue text requests.
Call it ‘Catalogue Work’.
2020
Send the same image for all general
exhibition catalogue image requests.
Call it ’Catalogue Image‘.
2020
No images of the work before the show.
If you have to send an image then send
pictures of where you are.
2021
Don’t go for install. You’ll be braver if
you don’t. Trust the work, work the trust.
2021
No more openings, including your own.
You know why. Go if you must but
understand the consequences.
2021
No gallery dinners, institutional
brunches, breakfasts, or lunches.
Again, you know why. Go if you must
but understand the consequences.
2021
If you have to do a talk, skip the
presentation and just take audience
questions. Call the talk ‘Questions’.
2021
Use the resources you don’t have.
2022
Say it how it is.
2022
Don’t use metaphor to stay safe.
2022
No more interpretation.
Write what you feel.
2022
Take holidays. Research trips do
not count.
2022
Build in maintenance. Schedule
emptiness. You will fill it.
2023
Invert your shame.
2023
Listen to the labour that is already
being done. The life of your body.
Slow feelings.
2024
No filler. No expectations. Let it be,
wide open and weird.
2025
1. You know why
Part of being literal is acknowledging what is and isn’t possible. ‘Don’t pay for travel or accommodation. If they can’t pay, just don’t go.’ ‘Ask for a fee’. ‘Only materials – write what the show is.’ Words are not rules: they are accounts of a life, and of work. There’s a catalogue text and a catalogue image. There’s the possibility of going on holiday during an art fair, the thought that goes into managing a life – burn time – of creative work. To spend time on labour and conditions means to sit with their complexity rather than try and solve anything. That’s where being literal comes in. The words become witnesses of process, or what happens when the work leaves the studio. To talk to yourself in a you is to treat yourself as an accomplice, not as complicit: these are reminders just as they are forms of insistence. It’s also weirdly personal, between you and you.
2. Material
Don’t make anything you have
to store. If you do, make it small.
2016
Don’t make anything you have to ship.
If you do, don’t cover shipping.
2016
I don’t like stuff. I recently gave away an old piece of furniture and was amazed by the sight of the empty corner in my bedroom. It felt like breathing. I live in a world of stuff and I write about something that could be reduced to the word ‘stuff’, but then, most of the artwork I am most interested in is something I could describe. Or perhaps, the exact thing is, I am interested in idea over execution, process over result. I have little contact to material culture and a lot of the art I love, and write about, can be summarised in a proposal. I guess it brings the work of artists closer to the stuff I work with: words.
After Hurricane Sandy in New York, when galleries in Chelsea were struggling with the aftermath of flooding to storerooms, I saw the destruction of art as disastrous, but also realised how little contact I have to material culture. I thought a lot about artists who tread lightly.
3. On refusal
SAY NO Alarm, daily at 10am.
2015–2017
This immediately makes me think of Yvonne Rainer’s ‘No Manifesto’. I know over the years she has resented how often it gets referenced / spoken about over the actual work, and yet, ‘No to style’ and ‘No to moving or being moved’ feel really worthwhile here. To go back to insistence, saying no (that said, what happens at 10am? Or is it the beginning of the hours where no is most useful?)
4. Last
Don’t take on an external studio. If
you can make work anywhere, you
might be able to keep making work.
That it all is, always, about how to be. An artist, a person, a worker, a mother. It’s hard to describe, it’s worth describing, and when you do, sometimes someone else reads it and knows why.
Orit Gat is a British writer living in London. She is the managing editor of draught.
Ghislaine Leung is a British artist living in London. Leung has had solo exhibitions at n.b.k., Berlin; Kunsthalle Basel; Renaissance Society, Chicago; Simian, Copenhagen; Maxwell Graham, New York; Ordet, Milan; Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach; Cabinet, London; Netwerk, Aalst; Kunstlerhaus Stuttgart; Chisenhale, London; Reading International; Cell Project Space, London and WIELS, Brussels.
*The Sub Scores were first published in Holdings (2015–2025) published by the Renaissance Society.