The Laundry Pile 2018

Away from the dazzling glamour of high street fashion, laundry is one of the hidden practices of fashion – it happens behind closed doors and is seldom spoken about. For most people, wearing clean looking and fresh smelling clothes is a routine part of everyday life, but there is also something darker hidden in our laundry baskets. Laundry is often overlooked as an extremely resource intensive and polluting practice – annually using up massive quantities of finite resources such as energy and water, and in the process, contributes towards greenhouse gas emissions, global warming and climate change. Between 1970 and 2014 the amount of energy used to do the laundry has doubled – a trend which looks set to increase.

Looking beyond the everyday mundanities of doing the laundry, The Laundry Pile brings together a range of work from a small group of fashion activists, theorists and researchers. It includes a mix of photography, garments, illustration and performance to explore the relationship between laundry, fashion and nature, and questions how we can collectively tackle these issues.

This installation is supported by Bristol Water and the University of Huddersfield.