Morley Gallery presents:  Kate Wilson – Total Rubbish  

This Autumn, Morley Gallery presents Total Rubbish  – an exhibition of recent paintings and drawings by South London artist and educator Kate Wilson.   Kate finds inspiration in her daily landscape – in urban spaces and in objects, natural and manmade. 

Total Rubbish will be exhibiting at the Morley Gallery 30 October – 21 Nov 2024 .

The exhibition concentrates on paintings and drawings made during and after lockdown – a period when Kate was painting empty streets and first started noticing and painting rubbish.  Kate Wilson [born 1965, London] draws and paints trees, shopping trollies and plastic bin bags, pruned bushes, coffee lids and food wrappings, power pylons, municipal bushes, lids, bins, plastic tops on grass, paper dissolving on pavements. 

Her work tends to be autobiographical – a way of exploring what it means to be alive. Kate Wilson commented:   “The act of painting is like writing poetry. It has the power to evoke many feelings on so many different levels, and I began to find meanings in these bin bags other than their obvious call to produce less waste. In their shape-shifting flexibility, I realised many of them reminded me of my own body; at times full, at times empty. This caused me to reflect on my relationship with food and how I viewed my own person. I find it hard to see my aging stomach as a thing of beauty, and, as a woman in her late 50’s, I sometimes feel I am no longer seen. Painting these bags reminded me that my body also has value.”  

“Since recognising this human connection, I now regularly notice and engage with rubbish thrown on the street. I pick up coffee lids, juice and water bottle tops, paper bags, and plastic containers and take them back to my studio to draw and paint. I find that they are all beautiful to look at despite being squashed and broken.”   

To coincide with her exhibition Kate will present a Penny Lecture at Morley College London about her work and explore how we can all be creatively inspired by the urban landscape around us.   

Seeing what is really there      

“I teach drawing for beginners at Morley and one of the most important things we talk about is looking properly – really looking – seeing what is really there, rather than what we think is there.’  ‘This can be a revelation; many of my students say afterwards they now encounter the world in an entirely new way.’    Kate teaches courses at Morley College London in Painting the Urban Landscape  Drawing for Beginners  and  intermediate Drawing.  Kate is a former head of painting, drawing and art history at Morley. She previously managed programmes of study at City Lit and was a visiting tutor at UAL Central St Martins and UCA Farnham.     Kate is the author of the highly-rated artist textbook Drawing and Painting – 

Materials and Techniques for Contemporary Artists published by Thames and Hudson.   

Sign up to our newsletter

For more information on upcoming exhibitions and other events, why not sign up to our Friends of Morley newsletter?