Encompassing giant wood installations, assemblages of litters, tiles transformed into intimate diaries and works on canvas, “Correspondences, a Ben Wilson Retrospective” will display a vibrant and heterogeneous body of work.

It will portray Wilson as more than the “Chewing Gum Man” an artist who acts and reacts to the diverse materials he encounters.

He works “with what is already there”, no matter at what scale or with what substance.

The show demonstrates his practice as fluid, open-ended and ever-changing but also firmly bound together by the twin needs of corresponding with the environment and with the people who live and walk through it.

“Correspondences” is a celebration of personal stories that gives expression to individual meaning while at the same time strengthening the social fabric of the individuals communities.

Attention will be given to the grassroots features of the artists practice.

With this in mind there will be a series of artistic “interventions” accompanying the exhibition in the Shoreditch neighbourhood.

With a period of subversive activity in the run-up and during the show itself, the artist in collaboration with the curator will create new chewing-gum and tile artworks whilst also connecting with the local urban area and its community.



The audience attending the show will be invited to explore and correspond both with the inside and the outside of the gallery space.

Sometimes hiding peacefully in unnoticed corners, sometimes sitting happily in plain sight, Wilson’s artworks will be waiting to be discovered.

Corresponding with you: The public programme of the event

As part of the corresponding process, a programme of talks and events has been devised in collaboration with Ben Wilson to run throughout the duration of the exhibition.