The commodification of the everyday has become a running theme of the COVID-19 pandemic. Having made homebodies of us all, COVID-19 has created absurd rolling shortages of flour, hair dye, coins, and toilet paper. This was the genesis of the ongoing work by the Rolls & Tubes Collective. In this work, the canon of photographic history has been reinterpreted, employing toilet paper as the primary compositional device.

Finding levity in the unprecedented sorrow brought about by the pandemic was an exceptional gift for these women. Taken as a whole, the work presents a timely questioning of omissions in the history of photography. The work is broad and offers multiple modalities for recontextualizing photographic images, from quotation to paraphrase; from homage to good roasting. The work is reflective of right now, not just in the repurposing of this everyday commodity, but in utilizing visual history to examine the contemporary moment.

Expect a humor-filled afternoon in which the artists interview each other about their impulses in this project, discuss breaking free creatively in lockdown, and what is next.

Rolls & Tubes is comprised of four women photographers from California; Christy McDonald, Colleen Mullins, Jenny Sampson, and Nicole White.

Register here

Sign up and secure your spot below before 5:00pm January 13. Space is limited.
We will meet through Zoom conferencing and a URL will be sent to those who register the evening before.