Stuart Middleton: 1000oz

KUNSTVEREIN GARTENHAUS is pleased to announce Stuart Middleton’s solo exhibition 1000oz opening on September 9, 2026, from 6 – 9 pm.

Stuart Middleton’s 1000oz is an installation taking over KUNSTVEREIN GARTENHAUS’ space.

A series of highly pigmented paintings fills the rooms, made using human milk protein as a binder. The milk is sourced from a wet-nurse in the UK who sells surplus on the grey market and the size of each painting is determined by how much a baby consumes over a set period: an hour, a day, a week. The total quantity of milk is 1000oz, and the quantity of paint produced from this amount dictates the number of works in the series.

The pigments all carry their own histories of extraction and toxicity: lapis from Badakhshan Province in Afghanistan; vermilion from Spanish mines worked by prisoners; lead antimonate from China, used in the production of armour-piercing ammunition. Setting these material histories against the chauvinism and theatre of painting itself, the canvas becomes a surface that is bound by cycles of labour and exploitation on a molecular level.

The exhibition explores what ethical frameworks govern art-making, whose labour is visible and compensated, and how the use of bodily fluids destabilises ideas of authorship and ownership. It contrasts the body that produces with the body that consumes and the moral judgements ascribed to both.
Stuart Middleton

Stuart Middleton (b. 1987, Crewe, UK) works across a wide range of media. He has had solo exhibitions at Sploj, Machynlleth; Clemetin Seedorf, Cologne; Chapter NY, New York; Carlos/Ishikawa, London; Künstlerhaus Graz; Tramway, Glasgow; and ICA London. His work has been shown in group exhibitions at Raven Row, London; Villa Imperiale, Pesaro; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Greene Naftali, New York; Kunsthaus Glarus; and Camden Arts Centre, London, among others. He lives and works in West Wales.