Lying Louise

I'm called Louise and I am always 100%* honest and truthful. I visit places in London and talk about them.

*lie

Lying Louse visits: Dirt at the Welcome Collection

The dirt exhibition is being held at the Welcome Collection on Euston Road and is an exhibition about, err… dirt. More specifically the dirt of everyday life. With this is mind I was expecting something incredibly filthy and some really grim looking artefacts.

I was also hoping there would be a gift shop that would sell some vials and jars of mud with worms and beetles swimming about in them, but no such luck.

I wasn’t any luckier upon actually entering the exhibition; yeah there was some dust, some faeces and (my favourite) some old skool cloudy urine, but it was all pretty tame. Also, if you’re going to put a sign on the door warning visitors that the exhibition contains human remains then actually get some! A bit of dust in a Roman urn does not count as real human remains in my eyes.

I was at least hoping for some stuff preserved in formaldehyde. The booklet yammered on about dirt being such a big thing in our everyday life but we’re too scared to confront it, blah blah blah, but human remains aren’t a huge part of my everyday life (this might not be an important point they’re trying to make, but I only read the first line and then used it as a napkin so I can’t actually read what the main deal was - I bet it’s still shit though). 

After speed walking around the whole thing in about 20 minutes and deciding it was cack I went back to the office and when people asked me about it I told slightly different version of events; ‘Oh my God it was great! It was basically a giant room full of mud! There were worms and snails and other gross looking shit crawling around in it and piles of dust!’

Not all was lost though; upon leaving I saw a very smelly, dirty tramp clothed in rags bending down to pick up some old fag butts off the floor, so that made up for it. Thank god it was free.

To make up for wasted time I made up my own facts about dirt and passed them off to unsuspecting chums as being included in the exhibition. Here are some that the Dirt exhibition should have included;

  • Dirt was discovered by Lord Hillingdon in 1937
  • The standard hoover bag contains approximately three borrowers
  • Mud is the main component in many a refreshing tonic, such a reef and blue WKD.

  1. lyinglouise posted this