Blue Collar by Clarke + Reilly

About

America’s capital of clothing production, LA’s Garment District, is powered by a vast community of generational Angelenos and countless immigrants seeking an increasingly elusive permanence in the sprawl, sometimes in abysmal working conditions. In Blue Collar, Clarke & Reilly aim to illuminate this class of workers, highlighting our increasing disconnection from producing consumer goods and our lack of consideration for the people who manufacture them.

Blue Collar is the next iteration for a series of fabric panels, previously exhibited as part of AD2021, a mixed media installation presented at the former Howard Hughes compound in Los Angeles. These large indigo-hued fabric ‘walls,’ each almost 80ft in length, were formed from material collected by the artists over the years, sourced from the Black Country in England, the French countryside, and the Northeast, and spanning three centuries. These were salvaged early utilitarian material, sections of bedsheets and old sacs, peasant cuts, and farming cuts, some with old repairs and patches. Once assembled, these cloth swathes were dyed using indigo from India, the US, and Japan, using traditional dyeing techniques. Indigo, the world's oldest and most iconic dye, adorning the ancient Egyptians to today’s American blue jean-wearing workers, holds special meaning to Clarke & Reilly.

Traveling from the artist's studio in Somerset, England, to Northern California, the panels were left untended and exposed to the elements, from the heat of the California sun to wet marshes and gullies. Each piece amassed the resilient marks of survival - a journey not unlike that forged by the immigrants of the Garment District in Downtown Los Angeles. This community has recently become a particular point of fixation for the artists.