Shoehorn is a two-person exhibition at Pipeline Contemporary curated by Slugtown (Newcastle). The exhibition features work by London-based artist Hilda Kortei and Glasgow-based artist Rachel Adams. Within the exhibition, both artists investigate ideas of value, labour and the overlooked, and present works that abstract quotidian objects into narrative-loaded pieces with new readings.

This exhibition includes new work by Adams that responds to the feminisation of digital labour throughout history.

The series 'Eyeballing' is made from slices of agate — a common semi-precious silica — whose blue, cataract-like surfaces have been laser-etched with circuitry integral to the NASA Apollo Missions. Women's labour was hidden within the scientific innovations of NASA's mathematics and engineering departments, but equally within the manufacturing of microchips for the missions, which women of colour predominantly fabricated. The series title refers to the process of marking errors with black dots on silicon wafers during integrated circuit production, as well as the milky, opaque quality of the semi-precious stones.

Propped up against the walls are a series of sculptural works resembling axes – the blades replaced by polished resin casts of shoe lasts. The works consider the potential for change and revolt, drawing on the false etymology of the word 'sabotage' – the purported story that workers in the 19th century threw their shoes into mechanical looms to disrupt them. Whilst this story is untrue, the potential of the image of a shoe or one's own labour as a weapon is realised in these axe works, which venerate women who disrupted traditional ideas of labour in various ways. The work titles 'Dorothy' and 'Elizabeth' directly refer to women who have pioneered advances in technology and workers' and women's rights.