Kate Wilson’s Total Rubbish exhibition at the Morley Gallery is ….. really good! If you are in the Waterloo area of London between now and November 21st, I highly recommend that you go and see it.
I particularly liked her close up paintings of single pieces of found rubbish; the crumpled plastic coffee lid, a chipped salad box and a well trodden lottery ticket. They are thoroughly observed objects, investigated until she knows them inside out, like a portrait painter looking to record the tiniest of blemishes. They a very skilfully made too.
There are a number of other rubbish works on show, including a wall of transparent plastic bin bags held up by metal rings. The ones that you see in underground stations. If you haven’t noticed them before seeing the paintings, you will on your way home.
The exhibition is big and fills two floors. Downstairs, at the other end of a long corridor of drawing produced with coloured pencils, is a film of Wilson sharing personal thoughts about making the work, from initial decisions of ‘that’ll be interesting to paint’, to making moving connections between the beauty she found in the discarded objects and our own aging bodies.
Kate Wilson Instagram
Drawing and Painting by Kate Wilson
