The King's Cross dust heap.
Not content with asking for 'Things...no bigger than your head', the Wellcome Collection is now moving into the ultimate in crowdsourced art. They want members of the public to send in household dust for a forthcoming exhibition about the grimy stuff.
Artist Serena Korda is collecting material for the 'Dirt: the filthy reality of everyday life' exhibition, which will open at the Wellcome in Sping next year. She'll compact your household dustings into 500 commemorative bricks, in a scheme that riffs on an old London tradition:
Korda's work is inspired by the commercialisation of waste in Victorian London, in particular the vast dust heaps which dominated the skylines at the top of Gray's Inn Road. Immortalised by Charles Dickens in Our Mutual Friend, the dust heaps supported a wide range of industries including the making of bricks. Mud from the brick fields of Somers Town was mixed with the ash, cinders and rubbish from the dust heaps, recycling the discarded detritus and dirt of London into the material from which the expanding city was built.
If you'd like to see your own spent skin cells, garment fluff and miscellaneous domestic particulates included in the show, you can pick up a dust envelope from the Wellcome Collection, apply online, email [email protected] or call UP projects on 0207 377 9677.
The bricks will be made over the next five months, and go on show in the spring. Of which, more then.
