The Blak Laundry is a functional laundromat + living artwork.

While we may be a bit hard to sort and catagorise, we are certainly not wishy washy in the work that we do.

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. We look to make money through the machines to reinvest 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. We started with three commercial washing machines and three dryers, which we purchased second hand. Since then, we have held The Blak Laundry at the Woodford Folk Festival, and have '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.

You can read more about The Blak Laundry in a recent ABC article by arts journalist Lisa Skerrett, here.

Along with doing a tonne of washing, we have provided a space and platform for First Nations artists to be visible, speak, show work, and 'agitate' the status quo. Artists we have supported—and who have supported us so far, include Gordon Hookey, Richard Bell, r e a, Judy Watson, Dylan Bolger, Boneta-Marie Mabo, Jacob Birch, Lydon Davis, Fred Leone, Deline Briscoe, Keiron Anderson, Nadine McDonald-Dowd, Lucy Davis, Bronywn Bancroft, Chelsea Watego, Alethea Beetson and Loki Liddle (Blak Social), Kyra Mancktelow, Otis Carmichael and Carol McGregor. 

Our 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. Our 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!

We are currently fundraising to set up permanent laundromat that can continue to resource the pop-up, touring work we do, and service we provide in the community.

If you want to work with or support The Blak Laundry, get in touch.