TOO MUCH/NOT ENOUGH

CURATOR PACKET

TOO MUCH / NOT ENOUGH

Installations by Kelly Wainwright

OVERVIEW

TOO MUCH / NOT ENOUGH is a five-part sculptural installation series by American artist Kelly Wainwright, currently living in South Africa. Each immersive environment explores a different ritual of bodily and emotional relief—through the lenses of consumption, coping, and contradiction.

Visitors move through monumental, absurd landscapes built from candy-colored pills, pink medicine, mountains of receipts, Wonder Bread, and piles of discarded cash. The exhibition asks:
What are we really trying to fix? And what does it cost to feel better?

Together, these installations expose a cultural loop—of desire, treatment, excess, and emptiness—spinning at the intersection of health, consumerism, and emotional memory.

INSTALLATIONS

1. Symptoms May Include

Two 25-foot mounds of brightly colored candy and prescription pills loom in the center of the space—seductive, excessive, and nearly indistinguishable.
This work explores the fantasy of relief through pharmaceuticals, sugar, and the illusion of control.

Visitors are surrounded by a wall of pill bottles, candy wrappers, and clinical signage as they enter the space. The audio gently loops a synthetic voice listing “possible symptoms” over an upbeat jingle.

Themes: Chemical relief, dopamine addiction, healthcare aesthetics
Portal: Curtain of pill bottles, candy wrappers, and blister packs
Sound: Infomercial jingle + prescription voiceover

2. 2-Ply

Visitors pass through an industrial corridor stacked with Ajax, plungers, tampons, diapers, and toilet brushes. This leads to a huge mountain of unrolled toilet paper, a single porcelain toilet, and the constant sound of flushing.

This is a space of bodily shame and obsessive hygiene—where digestion, sanitation, and emotional suppression converge. Pepto-Bismol walls lead viewers in. Relief is loud, endless, and messy.

Themes: Bodily control, sanitation, pink pharma, gendered labor
Portal: Cleaning aisle hellscape—Ajax, diapers, tampons
Sound: Continuous toilet flush, distant scrubbing

3. Everything Must Go

A nostalgic cash register cha-chings as it spits out receipt after receipt, slowly building a 25-foot pile of paper at its base.
Each receipt represents a micro-transaction of relief—candy, meds, pepto, PB&J—and the chemicals embedded in the paper itself (BPA) reflect the toxicity of these exchanges.

A retail voice on loop says, “Thank you for your purchase. Come again.” Every transaction-approved beep delivers a dopamine hit.

Themes: Retail therapy, transaction as self-soothing, endocrine disruption
Portal: Supermarket scanner gate, plastic bag wall
Sound: Receipt printing, “approved” dings, looping voiceover
Takeaway: Visitors receive receipts that read, “Thank you for coming. Please never come back.”

4. PB&J

“This installation is a sticky, sentimental homage to the American lunch ritual—and to the people who packed them. It’s about what gets passed down as comfort, even when it’s processed, messy, and nutritionally empty.”

Wonder Bread tiles the gallery walls. In the middle, a collapsing mountain of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches oozes into the room. Spilled jars of jam and peanut butter smear the white-bread-walls. The air is sweet and strange.

PB&J is the emotional residue of the entire series—what’s left when everything else has been chewed up and spit out. It’s both love and sugar. Childhood as candy. Care as chaos.

Themes: Sentimental food rituals, emotional coping, processed love
Portal: Leftover crusts, empty jars, cafeteria trays
Sound: Muffled chewing, and a child humming softly

5. What If

Visitors enter through an abandoned ATM vestibule—flickering lights, dead houseplants, fake security mirrors. Then, a narrow corridor of expired credit cards and peeling gold foil underfoot leads them into the heart of the space: a 25-foot-high mountain of crumpled cash.

Bills spill from split garbage bags and dented trash cans, littering the gallery floor like discarded dreams. Some are burned, torn, or stained. The atmosphere is equal parts lavish and rotten.

What If asks: What is money worth when the fantasy is gone? What happens when the system eats itself, and we keep spending anyway?

Themes: Financial waste, capitalism fatigue, aspirational collapse
Portal: ATM vestibule + credit card graveyard + gold foil trail
Sound: Distant bank chimes, soft paper fluttering, glitchy transaction tones

CONCEPTUAL STATEMENT

TOO MUCH / NOT ENOUGH explores the full cycle of modern relief: what we put in, what we take out, what it costs—and what it never truly solves.

Across five absurd, immersive environments, the exhibition critiques Western systems of health, consumption, value, and comfort. These are rituals that promise wellness but deliver mess: drugs that look like candy, sandwiches that feel like love, purchases that register like therapy, and money that ends up in the trash.

It’s a sculptural loop of sickness and self-soothing—tender, grotesque, and painfully familiar.

ARTIST BIO

Kelly Wainwright is an American artist based in Cape Town, South Africa. Her work spans installation, architecture, photography, and performance, exploring how everyday behaviors become systems of relief.

Using humor, monumentality, and materials drawn from consumer life, she builds immersive sculptural spaces that reflect the absurd, intimate, and compulsive rituals we use to soothe ourselves—physically, emotionally, and economically.

Her practice is rooted in both play and precision: beds become trampolines, receipts become landscapes, toilet paper becomes labyrinths. In her work, scale mimics intensity, and humor becomes a survival tool.

INSTITUTIONAL FIT

This project is suited for museums and spaces with:

25–30 ft ceiling height
Install capacity for large-scale immersive sculpture
Audience interest in conceptual installation, consumer critique, and material absurdity

BUDGET + TIMELINE

Budget + Support Needs
Final costs depend on site, scale, and institutional partnership.
Estimated project cost: $80,000–$120,000, depending on scope, materials, and venue-specific requirements.

Timeline & Production
The project requires an estimated 6–12 months of planning and production, depending on scale and institutional support. This includes design finalization, fabrication, shipping, and site-specific preparation. On-site installation typically takes 2–3 weeks with a dedicated build team, working in close collaboration with local fabricators and museum staff.

Presentation Options
While the project is conceived as a five-part cycle, the installations can also be adapted to fit a single gallery space or presented individually. This flexibility allows the work to respond to different institutional capacities, while the full cycle remains the most immersive expression of the concept.

Note: Local production partnerships are welcomed and may reduce costs.

This large-scale, immersive installation series is designed for flexibility and international collaboration. Support typically includes:

1. Site & Infrastructure

Large-scale sculptural installation setup
Gallery or museum installation support
Venue-specific logistics, permits, and insurance

2. Fabrication & Materials

Industrial quantities of sugar, paper, pill replicas, bread, toilet paper, etc.
Custom fabrication and technical rigging
Environmental controls and safety coordination (e.g. sanitation, food-safe handling)