A Five-Part Installation Series on Comfort, Excess & the Absurd
Installation series by Kelly Wainwright · Proposal in development · Images are concept visualizations

CURATOR PACKET

OVERVIEW

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

Five immersive environments, built at absurd scale, from the most ordinary things imaginable: pills, toilet paper, receipts, Wonder Bread, cash. Make any of them 25 feet tall and something shifts. You stop using them and start seeing them.

Drugs that look like candy. Sandwiches that feel like love. Purchases that register like therapy. Money that ends up in the trash.

The work isn’t a verdict. It’s an invitation to step back far enough to notice. Some people will laugh. Some will feel a pang. Most will do both.

Curious, absurd, and painfully familiar.

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 where bodily comedy meets obsessive hygiene, and where digestion, sanitation and what we don’t say out loud all 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 undone.

What If asks: what is money worth when the fantasy wears off? 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 contemporary artist living in Cape Town and working internationally. Her practice spans immersive installation, participatory photography, painting, movement and writing. She is best known for PLAY JUMP EAT (2009–), a participatory photography project with more than 100 participants, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, shown at Cape Town’s Infecting the City festival and featured in Elle Decor and Design Indaba.

Using humor, monumentality and materials drawn from everyday life, she builds immersive spaces that reflect the absurd, intimate 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, everyday materials at scale, and work that is funny and serious at the same time

BUDGET + TIMELINE

Estimated project cost: $80,000–$120,000 USD, depending on scope, materials and venue. Final costs depend on site, scale and institutional partnership.

Timeline: An estimated 6–12 months of planning and production, including design finalization, fabrication, shipping and site preparation. On-site installation typically takes 2–3 weeks with a dedicated build team, working closely with local fabricators and museum staff.

Presentation options: The project is conceived as a five-part cycle, but the installations can also be adapted to a single gallery space or presented individually. The full cycle remains the most immersive expression of the concept.

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)

3. Installation Crew
On-site build team and fabrication partners
Shipping and material handling
Technical support for sound, lighting and interactive components

4. Artist Residency + Travel
2–4 week on-site residency for installation
Housing, per diem and roundtrip flights from Cape Town or the US
Local coordination and project direction

5. Documentation + Promotion
Video and photo documentation
Press and curator materials
Media outreach, social content and interactive print (e.g. receipt printers)

6. Artist Fee
Concept, creative direction and project management

7. Contingency (10–15%)

Detailed budget available upon request for committed partners.

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

Interested in presenting TOO MUCH / NOT ENOUGH? Get in touch →