Chinese hoarder art exhibition

Chinese artist Song Dong lovingly arranges 10,000 items of his mothers at Barbican show called Waste Not helps Britain 'understand the reality of Chinese history and culture in the 20th century'.

Transported in two shipping containers from China, 10,000 items took a fortnight for Song and his family to arrange on the floor of the Barbican's Curve gallery. The exhibition is titled Waste Not, after the slogan that the Chinese population were force-fed during the cultural revolution. No item was thrown away in case it was needed at a later date and Waste Not documents Songs mother's life and her love for her husband.

After the death of Song's father in 2002, his mother became a hoarder and turned her house in Beijing into rooms filled with clutter.

'I asked her why she wanted to fill the room with what to me is rubbish, and she said: 'If I fill the room, the things remind me of your father,'' said Song.

Suggesting they turn the possessions into artwork, Song and his mother first exhibited Waste Not at the Tokyo gallery in Beijing in 2005.

'So many people came who had a similar life during the cultural revolution and talked to my mother for half a day at a time,' said Song. 'They told her: 'It's not your home, it's my home.' It got my mother out of her sadness ' she said she had a second life.'

Senior curator at the Barbican, Jane Alison, said the exhibition was 'so personal and poetic it helps us to understand the reality of Chinese history and culture in the 20th century in a way that newspapers can't'.

Waste Not was also shown in New York in 2009, the year of Songs mother's death.

Born in 1966, Song has often challenged the cultural revolution's impact on his family. Questioning China's changing political and cultural beliefs, his work has become well known worldwide. In 2003 he started a series of sculptures made out of biscuits titled Eating the City. They were displayed and consumed in many places including Selfridge's in London.

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