I met my best friend in a toilet. I thought she was an attendant and that I needed to hide my drink by my waist while I squeezed into a flooded cubicle with another pal. After several return trips and the realisation that an actual toilet lady wouldn’t sit with her Doc Martens in the sink, we struck up a conversation about a mutual hatred for the house tracks playing outside the confines of the bathroom and walked to the buses home at 6am holding hands. A heartwarming story for the ages – a story you can probably match.
Girls Only founder and curator Antonia Marsh knows the importance of the humble but hallowed toilet. New exhibition “Toilet Humour” looks past the chipped white tiles and smell of Toilet Duck to show you what goes on behind (sometimes) closed doors. A silent but shared understanding of the privacy of the bathroom often leads to unintentional but unbounded intimacy, which just as often, evaporates the moment you step back into reality.
With a selection of mixed media work from UK and US artists, Marsh and co. inspect literally what goes down the pan, with vinyl and pearly poops (for want of a better word) by Madeleine von Froomer and Kate Falcone respectively, dotted around Doomed Dalston. Looking past the literal, other artists explore the separation and representation of genders: Rebecca Storm whips up some menstrual blood jelly, photographed ready for high tea.
Lingering in the perfect limbo between thought-provoking and just good old-fashioned fun, Toilet Humour opens tomorrow at Doomed Dalston. To get us in the mood, we quizzed Marsh on anything and everything toilet related.
