This is one of Emma Neuberg’s plastic printed paintings on show at The Triangle Gallery, Chelsea College of Art, in London, in 2007. The artist developed a technique of printing with recycled plastics while doing her PhD in Print at the Royal College of Art. Compared with the collage work of the LA feminist movement, this skirt is one of a series called The Billboard Skirts. It focuses on western societies’ expectation of consumerism upon young women; denied meaningful work or professional traction, women are pressured into making pretty via consumerism.
The work was commissioned by Textiles Environment Design at University of the Arts London and curated by Rebecca Earley to illustrate the late twentieth century pressure to blindly consume all fads and fashions, forever consuming rather than producing.
It references Richard Hamilton’s 1956 collage, Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?. See the Met Museum listing here.
The group show was called Ever & Again: Experimental Recycled Textiles and it toured throughout the UK in 2007 – 8.
Pictured is Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? polythene on cotton, 110cm x 70cm x 0.1cm, 2007.