Time & Motion: Redefining Working Life @ FACT Liverpool, until 9 Mar

Under strip lights, a group of young people in blue overalls solder wires and pass plastic components along a conveyor belt. But these Chinese workers aren't manufacturing consumer electronics. They're performing for 75 Watt, a new video piece by Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen. After all, what exactly is work?

Split between FACT's two gallery spaces, Time & Motion is a mixture of new pieces and archive material (newspaper clippings, photographs, book covers) all exploring the working day. It's all presented in collaboration with the Royal College of Art, and includes a groundfloor co-working space available to the public.

Central to the exhibition is Victorian social reformer Robert Owen's call for factory workers to have “eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.” Time & Motion explores our conception of the working day, of labour and the disparity between earning potential, as demonstrated by Oliver Walker's new video installation One Pound. Four screens display videos showing how long it takes for different workers to earn £1. Agricultural workers toil in a dusty field, picking and bailing cotton for over an hour. Elsewhere, a smiling, sharp-suited stockbroker flashes up on screen for less than a second.

Punchcard Economy, a machine-knitted banner by Sam Meech, dominates FACT's cafe space. Looking closer, gridlike patterns decorate the background. They're based on punchcards documenting the working patterns of members of the public that have been collected by the Northwest-based artist.

Upstairs in Gallery 2, Andrew Norman Wilson's film Workers Leaving the Googleplex investigates some dubious working practices at Google's Silicon Valley headquarters. Another highlight is Gregory Barsamian's Die Falle, a kinetic sculpture representing the unending cycle of human labour. It's equally baffling and beautiful.

Time & Motion asks powerful questions about working lives and the dissolving boundaries between labour, rest and recreation. [Jacky Hall]