The Blak Laundry is a functional laundromat + living artwork.
Photo: Saul Steed
The Blak Laundry is a pop-up, touring laundromat where you can wash your clothes, engage in critical conversation, performances and ‘agitations’, interact with art objects, and become a part of an ever-evolving socially and politically engaged artwork. As an autonomous and culturally-centred ‘Blak space’, The Blak Laundry responds to, and reclaims agency within arts and business markets that continue to disenfranchise, disinfect and compromise our cultural ethics and ways of working. Money through the machines is reinvested in First Nations people, artists, reparative justice, and social and political change.
The Blak Laundry conceptual work was conceived and developed by Dominique Chen (Gamilaroi) and Libby Harward (Quandamooka), and was launched as part of the Horizon Festival in 2023, at Munimba-Ja Arts Centre on Jinibara Country, Maleny, QLD.It started with three commercial washing machines and three dryers, which were purchased second hand. Since then, The Blak Laundry has been held at Tarnanthi, Woodford Folk Festival, and has 'taken over' Richard Bell's internationally reknown work Embassy, as part of ProppaNOW's OCCURENT AFFAIR exhibition at the University of the Sunshine Coast Art Gallery
The Blak Laundry activations are fun, engaging and thought-provoking, and are a warm and gentle but critical way to bring the broader community into our issues—and find commonality and connection in a disconnecting modern world. The work helps process the 'dirty laundry' and shift any stubborn stains residing in our collective social fabric. In The Blak Laundry, everything comes out in the wash Bub!
If you want to work with or support The Blak Laundry, get in touch.
Architecture: Skein
Construction: Adelaide Built