What a load of rubbish!

PLASTIC fantastic . . . a gallery assistant studies the recycled landscapes

CRITICS who say modern art is rubbish are spot on in their assessment!

The Panoramica exhibition at Gallery Oldham is transporting visitors into a world of strange and beautiful landscapes — made from discarded milk bottles to dried meat.

Edinburgh-born Gayle Chong Kwan has created panoramas and miniature villages from waste food and plastic packaging.

Her recycled art is influenced by topics such as tourism, waste and how we grow and ship food. It is also a modern take on the gallery’s much-loved Oldham Panorama which was photographed in 1876.

Gayle has exhibited extensively around the world and explained: “Visitors will get the chance to see the ways in which I use everyday, throwaway and waste materials to create mythical places and landscapes, which question issues such as the personal and global politics of food, waste materials, tourism and master planning.”

Highlights include the photographic work Babel, which shows a tower constructed from raw, cooked and dried meat.

Inspired by the biblical story of men who built a tower to try and reach up to heaven, the mythical landscape appears enticing at first but on closer inspection the sweating meat is repellent.

Grice Ivories is made from discarded food packaging while Core 1 is a series of volcanic landscapes.

Panoramica runs until April 4. You can also hear Gayle speak about her work at a free talk at 1pm on March 10.