Polishing Turds by Stuart Langley
What have your eyes been eating lately? Stuart Langley invites you to have a little think about your visual nutrition. We obsessively scrutinise what slips into our mouths, yet allow anything to penetrate our eyes.
In a world constipated with images, advertising, information and disposable distractions, what exactly are we feeding our eyes, and how does it affect what goes on inside our human bean brains? Through two absurd installations, Polishing Turds (ごみを磨く) and Colon Coaster (腸コースター), Stuart explores the consumption, digestion and eventual excretion of visual material.
Initially exhibited at OVERGROUND in Fukuoka, Japan, Polishing Turds playfully teases our obsession with transforming The Nothing into something desirable, while Colon Coaster takes visitors on a ridiculous white- knuckle ride through intestine-like tubes stuffed with lies. The installation evolves from another member of Stuart’s excrement-heavy family of artworks, Full of Shit (うんこだらけ), originally created at Tamayura Chinkan, Mojiko, and currently exhibited as part of BALTIC Open Submission 2026.
Animated trails of light follow through its twists and turns, transforming the digestive process into a miniature amusement park. Blurring the boundaries between attraction and repulsion, spectacle and waste, the exhibition celebrates the tension found in combining contradictions. Beneath the toilet humour lies a slurry of serious questions: in a world full of shit, how do we decide what’s worth swallowing? Every fictional flyer, whether in Japanese or English, has been imagined, written and designed by the artist, creating a delirious world with its own peculiar visual diet.
This exhibition follows Japanese artist AOISIMON’s COMIC WORLD コミックワールド which runs until October 31. Both exhibitions mark the beginning of an ambitious Fukuoka-Teesside artist exchange via The Auxiliary and OVERGROUND to explore and mix artistic expressions borne from environments separated by thousands of miles, yet similar in industrial heritage and creative ambition.
This exhibition is programmed as part of Turner on Tees, a region-wide programme of exhibitions and creative activity taking place across the Tees Valley alongside Turner Prize 2026 at MIMA, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art.
Celebrating the region's extraordinary creativity, Turner on Tees brings together cultural organisations, artists and communities from across the Tees Valley. Programme partners include Hartlepool Art Gallery, Redcar Palace, Darlington Library Gallery, ARC in Stockton-on-Tees, The Auxiliary and MIMA in Middlesbrough, with additional exhibitions and activities at Preston Park Museum & Grounds and the Dorman Museum. The programme includes projects developed and curated by partner organisations, alongside contributions from MIMA, Tees Valley Arts, Creative Darlington and Black Creatives & Arts Network (BCAN).
For full programme details and event listings, visit: https://mima.art/project/turner-on-tees/ Turner on Tees is kindly funded by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
📍 The Auxiliary, 31 Station Street, Middlesbrough, TS1 1SR
🥂 Opening Reception: Thursday 5 November, 5pm
🗓 Thurs 5 Nov - Sat 21 Nov
⏰ 12:00pm - 4:00pm (Wed - Sat)