This is (Not) My Laundry

2023

Etching on awagami paper, with handsewn alterations

Artist Statement

“A picture is not to be confused with something tangible, could you fill this pipe of mine? No you couldn’t, could you. It is only an image. If I’d written ‘this is my pipe’, I should have been lying.” - René Magritte

If not my laundry, than who’s?

Following on from artists Karen LaMonte, Betty Goodwin, Susan Aldworth, Marisa Boullosa and Annette Messager, This is (Not) My Laundry explores the idea of identity, absence, and memory of the body through the items of clothing we wear. Seeking to expose the relationship we have with our clothes and the memories that it holds within the weft of its fabric.

The viewer is placed into a domestic space, left alone with the personal items of an individual who was once here, but is now absent. Their lifeless clothing hung-up, left as a marker of human presence. Tempting the viewer to peer into the life of another; or perhaps imagine themselves as the owner of these items.

It will become apparent that these items are not what they come across as on first glance, instead they are simply a replica, an imprint, a direct impression of their original material. What was once a whole garment has been fragmented, then sutured together to create again something which is whole, something which mimics that of it’s original form.

The question that still lingers is weather or not these items of clothing still hold the memories of their original material, or is it simply a stand in for them.