Green Salon Collective features in Hair: Untold Stories

Green Salon Collective is proud to be featured in Hair: Untold Stories, at the Horniman Museum & Gardens in South East London.

The free exhibition runs until June 2022 and showcases unexpected stories about hair, from personal stories in South London salons (told via Zoom during 2020’s lockdown), to tales of global hair trade networks. Putting substance before style, the show highlights hair as a material and explores our complex relationship with hair both on – and off – our heads, including why we care so much about our hair, and how hair is entangled with society’s expectations and our relationships to others.

Through the museum’s collections, the exhibition also examines how hair has been used in ingenious ways by communities across the world, to make items including jewellery, clothing, and rope – as well as Green Salon Collective’s contribution, hair booms. Created to help stop the spread of oil in the sea, a hair boom is made from hair cuttings, tightly packed into cotton or nylon tubes. When placed in either water or on the shores of beaches, the booms absorb the oil, stopping it from spreading, saving wildlife and protecting the environment.

Fry Taylor, co-founder of Green Salon Collective, said:

So much love has gone into curating this incredible exhibition. It’s an honour to see the work of the GSC included and another exciting opportunity to share our research and ideas with consumers. The hair boom is just one of many examples of the circular solutions we have in place for salon waste, and we hope this exhibition will help spread the GSC message just that little bit further.

Featuring work from artists, filmmakers and curators, Hair: Untold Stories runs daily (except Wednesdays) from 10am-5.30pm throughout June. Entry is free. If you're not in London, don't worry - the exhibition is heading north after June, where it will be shown in Sheffield and then Carlisle, running until 2023.