EXHIBITION STATEMENT

An idea conceived out of the need to maintain normalcy and connection during the pandemic lockdown in 2020, the four Bay Area artists in Rolls & Tubes Collective - Christy McDonald, Colleen Mullins, Jenny Sampson and Nicole White - decided to parody iconic photographs in the medium's history using rolls of toilet paper, the accompanied paper tubes and other materials. What started as an exercise in creativity evolved into a full-blown project resulting in a trove of impressive images from which the traveling exhibition was born. All prints shown in this exhibition are available for sale. 


From Corey Keller
Adjunct Professor, CCA; Independent Curator; Historian

Over the course of a year that demanded we think more critically about inclusion, the project became something far greater than the sum of its parts: a series of four individual artists’ interpretations of great works from the history of photography posted on Instagram merged into a collective reflection on the writing of that history itself.


From the Artists

The commodification of the commonplace became a running theme of the COVID-19 pandemic. Having made homebodies of us all, COVID-19 created absurd rolling shortages, of flour, hair dye, and of course, toilet paper. This was the genesis of the work by the Rolls & Tubes Collective. In this work, each of the four artists reinterpreted a known photograph in the arc of contemporary, and the history of photography, utilizing toilet paper as an element of the image.