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Have you ever tried to comprehend the fragments we leave behind in the toilets of clubs and pubs? We all notice these things, consciously or not, yet often write them off as low, less reputable forms of expression when compared to other art forms.
Have you ever tried to comprehend the fragments we leave behind in the toilets of clubs and pubs? We all notice these things, consciously or not, yet often write them off as low, less reputable forms of expression when compared to other art forms.
1st of August 2025
Words + Images by LINUS DAY
Yet, scribbled names, stickers, or muddled moments of conversation are stuck to the walls from Bristol to London to New York. Somewhere between the mess, these bathroom cubicles start to tell their own unique story of forging new, social canvasses for expression.
When walking into the Bricklayer’s Arms - a quaint picturesque pub nestled in Shoreditch - you're instantly met with the familiar sight of standard pub decor; a long red bar offering suitably expensive drinks for the postcode, round tables, shared benches, and mostly bare walls hung with the odd decaying frame.
But, step into the bathroom and it feels as though you have entered a whole other world. The red walls are absolutely plastered with graffiti, every inch engulfed with stickers, tags, and cartoon faces – to the point where the mirror offers little reflection at all as an all new, improvised artefact of continuous expression.
These walls tell hundreds of stories of the people inspired to leave a mark, pulsing with the voices of its past occupants. It is not just a bathroom, but a collective canvas, or an intimate archive marking years-upon-years of expression.
Over the past two years, I have been photographing these scribbles. More often than not, these walls are the most visually intriguing part of the venues I explore.
Although many clubs have amazing artistic decoration, a great deal of venues are becoming more and more corporate. With sponsorship adverts from big companies and disposable vape vending machines dominating spaces that have the potential for creative and engaging art, the bathroom remains a mostly untouched space.
The walls of these bathrooms memorialise raw expression, and become an overlapping, chaotic collage that conveys the collective thoughts of ravers, drunken dancers, rebellious political statements, confessions, admissions of love, or simply a mark that someone has been there. It’s an individual's claim to a space, often to the delight of others who stumble across it.
This claiming of space and marking of time has always existed in one form or another, from scratched prayers into the walls of mediaeval churches, to graffiti scribbled onto ancient Roman artifacts, the urge to leave a mark is nothing new.
Humans are inclined to occupy a little patch of the world, something for themselves. And in nightlife, especially with the increased documentation of our lives through social media, bathrooms are one of the few unpoliced areas that can offer room for individualism in the modern world.
The pub/club bathroom is an ethereal space, a place private yet public, intimate yet shared, an in-between space within an in-between space. Something about this strange area obviously encourages expression, facilitating expressions of love, euphoria, and intoxication experienced on a night out.
These observations from the neglected walls of dirty, dimly lit toilet stalls offer a reflection of the venue, city, and time in which they were created. They display the political views of the occupants and the current societal issues, with much writing expressing anti-war and anti-fascist sentiment, as well as outright fury at specific politicians.
The graffiti-scrawled toilet wall remains one of the last uncensored nightlife spaces; it exposes how so many people, who aren't artists displaying professional work in galleries, are inclined to express themselves artistically in a public setting or improvised space.
It shows the creative potential we all hold, and that when given the opportunity for free and democratic expression, ordinary people use their agency to create thought-provoking and visually rich artwork.
If this topic interests you, there's a great Instagram account called publicbathroomstilllife you should check out!
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