Catalytic Clothing - Feild of Jeans - Chelsea College of Art & Design, London

Catalytic Clothing is a radical project that brings together the worlds of fashion and chemistry with the potential to clean the air we breathe. Employing existing technology in a new way, it seeks to explore how clothing and textiles can be used as a catalytic surface to purify air. It is the brainchild of artist and designer Professor Helen Storey (London College of Fashion) and chemist Professor Tony Ryan (University of Sheffield) – people from very different worlds whose minds have come together in highly successful art/science collaborations.

For differing venues Helen Storey launched the second artistic intervention in a series of Catalytic Clothing events for the general public. She has chosen to produce a ‘field of jeans’, as most people own such a garment, and at any one time, half the planet are wearing them! Like an array of terracotta solders, small ‘crops’ or fields of jeans are embedded with the catalytic technology and constructed in torso-less rows for the public to discover. Donated in a ‘jeans amnesty’, the rows have a strong visual impact and aim to be an emblem of the ease with which change can be effected if we all work together.