The Hour

Most people wouldn’t look at rubbish bins and be inspired, but that’s exactly what happened to artist Craig Ellis, who has created no less than 31 model wheelie bins as part of his latest artistic collection.

Craig’s work, which features models based on rubbish cans of all designs from around the country, is currently being displayed in his exhibition, The Order of Things. All the models are tiny, with the largest one only reaching only three inches high.

Explaining the inspiration behind his work, Craig said: “My work over the last ten years has been interested in language, been interested in the categorisation of objects, and how we as human beings can interact with objects around us. But (it’s) also to do with how objects deal with both design and necessity and how that evolution is visualised through a series of objects…there’s interesting variations wherever you go.”

Everyday life and everyday items are things that excite the Craig and give him ideas for unusual new pieces of work, as he explained: “The everyday is something I’m really interested in, in terms of the way objects have their own personal histories and narratives. People use things, people collect things because they’re important to them, because they’ve got some kind of sensitivity to that object.”

And he is more than aware that some people might find his bin model exhibition a little bit strange – but loves to bring unusual things into the wider public domain and find that they're usually well received.

He continued: “It is eccentric, it is quirky. I’m in the privileged role of an artist that I can do slightly strange things. And people don’t always go ‘that’s a strange thing you’re doing’, ‘they go ‘that’s an interesting thing you’re doing’. And by doing that I can make people look at things that are maybe quite mundane, and look at them in a slightly different way.”

Craig's exhibition The Order of Things is currently on show in The Foyer Gallery in Aberdeen, until May 8. Find out about the opening times from the gallery's website.