Skip Door: Utility Room

In Skip Door: Utility Room, Lubaina Himid depicts practical utilitarian objects such as the bottom of a rake, a number-marked masher, drain or straining device and a conical filter, a strainer. Himid amplifies the makeshift and repurposed nature of each of these appliances—usually associated with cleaning, filtering and maintaining—in this isolated format. The quiet dignity required of ‘making something out of whatever means are available to you’ as Himid intimates, suggests a form of domestic manual labour that is physical, custodial and often invisible.