Price Cut: A publication for Super Farmers’ Market Exhibition
18 June – 17 July 2010
Handel Street Projects, 19–21 Sicilian Avenue, Holborn WC1
Publication contributors: Aaron McPeake, Scott Schwager, Katrine Hjelde, Dorset Cereals, Isobel Bowditch, Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre, Ben Fitton, Barbara Zanditon, Kristen Lovelock, Sarah Tremlett, Marsha Bradfield
Exhibition curators: Mary Anne Francis and Lucy Heyward
This publication was composed of text-based works made in response to a writing brief by Fedja Klikovac, director of Handel Street Projects. Contributors were all participants in ‘To Write How’, a weekly seminar (2009-2010) around art-writing based at Chelsea College of Art & Design, co-organised by Isobel Bowditch and Mary Anne Francis.
The writing brief asked contributors to:
a) to use text – and only text – that is found in the breakfast cereal aisle / section of your local / usual supermarket
b) to produce a text to A5 size that can be
c) used as a flyer to ‘advertise’ the group show Super Farmers’ Market
This was my contribution to the publication.
The first time I saw a cereal box I was 20 years old. There were no such niceties in the part of the world where I grew up. The task of making a piece of work out of text found in the cereal aisle of a supermarket had very little emotional resonance, without childhood memories of breakfast time, favourite brands or slogans to kick off my creative thinking.
On a Sunday afternoon I dragged my 7-year-old daughter along to the local Tesco. Earlier on, my daughter had snatched the £1 coin from our swimming pool locker. We had a rather lengthy negotiation in which I sought to get the coin back, my moral argument being that if she hasn’t earned the coin, it wasn’t hers, and therefore keeping it was equivalent to stealing it.
As I browsed through the cereal aisle, nothing seemed worthy of appropriation. I then noticed an abundance of small round signs proclaiming a Price Cut. I decided to take one. They were not big, but they had been fastened to the shelves with some purpose, so it took a bit of wrestling to pull it off. My daughter looked on attentively and asked me what was I doing. I explained that I was taking the sign home to make a piece of art, and she swiftly pointed out that since I was not going to pay for it, and it wasn’t mine nor had I earned it, I was actually stealing it.
I was alarmed that her high-pitched voice making remarks about me “stealing” from the supermarket aisle might raise unwanted attention. I stuffed the sign in my pocket, and we made a hasty exit.
The stolen sign was left on the living room table for a few days. I was not sure of what to do with it. I liked it as an object. It was economic in its design, colourful and bold. It was somehow reassuring in its message, with no ambiguity to its promise. I had a thought of making a copy of it, but trying to keep it really close to the (so well resolved) original.
Following Sunday, another outing, this time to Tate Britain. We made our de rigueur stop at the Art Trolley (craft-based entertainment to keep the children of Tate visitors busy). The Art Trolley offered me a simple set of materials and tools, and a conceptual excuse (Trolley/Trolley) to complete my cereal assignment. It was an artistic challenge to work kneeling on the floor of the gallery, and to successfully manoeuvre a giant bar of Pritt Stick and a pair of child-scissors. I was quite proud of the results, and the lady who was tending to the Art Trolley complimented my efforts. It turned out a bit crumpled and dirty and I liked that too. I even managed to re-kindle a sense of recovered childhood in the process.
I was a bit disappointed when I got home and compared my sign to the original. I hadn’t remembered it very well, and missed some crucial elements of its shape and choice of colours. This is as far as things have gone. I have a bit of hunch that there was more to be gotten out of the Price Cut slogan, and I feel slightly un-creative at not having been able to tap into any of its hidden potential, but there you go.
Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre, May 2010
Posted on June 18, 2010