The UK's Smallest Art Gallery

MMU art student Melanie Warner has set up her own little Louvre – a tiny art gallery in a portable loo.

The 22-year-old has converted the metre-square cubicle into what she calls ‘Manchester’s Smallest Art Gallery', and adorned the walls with works on a toilet theme.

Melanie is in her final year of MMU’s well-known Interactive Arts degree course, which encourages budding artists to think-outside-the-box and create installation pieces à la Tracey Emin.

Melanie bought the worn-out lavatory from a firm in Eccles and spent a month converting it into her ’Bog Standard Gallery’ at MMU’s School of Art.

Collection

Inside she has exhibited some of her amazing collection of photographs of toilet signs from all over the world.

"I’ve been studying toilet signs from everywhere from the Negev Desert to the Vatican. The differing depictions of male and female in different cultures are fascinating."

Melanie’s mini-gallery forms part of a city-wide exhibition of Jewish art at the Sha’are Hayim synagogue in Didsbury, which was opened by the Mayor of Manchester last night, April 26.

Melanie, from Hale, near Altrincham, created the gallery for her final degree show and hopes it will start her professional career with a splash.

- Look out for Mel’s polka-dot caravan in the Art & Design Degree Shows in June.

For more about Interactive Arts at MMU, go to www.artdes.mmu.ac.uk/courses/programme/1004.