Exhibition Insight… Pop Mart

Kenny Pittock, Jam Fancies, 2021. Photo: the artist. — Kenny Pittock, *Jam Fancies,* 2021. Photo: the artist.

Words by Rebecca Freezer

In these unprecedented chapters of home confinement, travel restrictions and the closing of all sites deemed as non-essential, the quotidian supermarket remains one of the only spaces outside of the home we can visit. With schools, restaurants, gyms, salons and places of retail, recreation and worship shuttered the grocery store, and its associated items, are ascribed new meanings. When exhibitions are cancelled and galleries are closed, the visual culture of the white, wide-walled, flood-lit supermarket becomes something of a proxy to these much-missed outlets. The humble toilet roll becoming as much a precious commodity as a symbol of public panic.

The comparison between art galleries and supermarkets has been frequently documented. Beginning with the 1964 Pop Art installation The American Supermarket which turned a New York gallery space into a simulacrum of an ordinary grocery store of the time. Pop Art artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Robert Watts, Claes Oldenburg and Tom Wesselman created artworks resembling typical supermarket fare. From Watts’ Case of Eggs displayed on an individual white plinth, to Warhol’s stacks of Campbell’s soup cans, the line was blurred between art gallery and supermarket, everyday objects and fine artworks.

Some fifty years later we have seen installed across the world Shanghai-based artist Xu Zhen’s XUZHEN Supermarket, 2007-17, a proto-typical Chinese convenience store containing packages devoid of contents. Followed by British textile artist Lucy Sparrow’s site-specific art installations of felt grocery goods as in 2019’s Sixth Avenue Delicatessen in New York. Running in Adelaide at the same time as Pop Mart is The Plastic Bag Store. Transported into Rundle Place by Brooklyn-based artist Robin Frohardt as part of the 2021 Adelaide Festival, it is an immersive supermarket installation made entirely of plastic.

Kenny Pittock, A Jar of Strawberry Jam, 2021. Photo: the artist. — Kenny Pittock, *A Jar of Strawberry Jam,* 2021. Photo: the artist.

Continuing the traditions of the Pop Art artists of the 1960s, the artists in Pop Mart continue to find inspiration in the everyday. Using media as inedible as cardboard, glass, ceramics and wool, they re-imagine our personal relationships to objects, employing irony and evoking notions of nostalgia. Melbourne-based ceramic artist and painter Kenny Pittock creates a new series of works which pay tribute to the locale presenting his creations. Imagining JamFactory as a purveyor of all things jam-related he offers a series of six new ceramic sculptures: a jar of Strawberry jam, a jam donut, a packet of Jam Fancies, a Pearl Jam CD, a Space Jam VHS, and a pair of jim jams. Pittock’s irreverent sculptures elicit emotionally-charged memories that recount the experience of growing up in the 90s. These single, disparate objects displayed collectively are the only remnants of the latest panic-buying frenzy. Yesterday’s bread and obsolete media, slightly shop-soiled and reduced to clear.

Glass artist and JamFactory alumna Emma Young also makes bright, playful and familiar confections which evoke powerful childhood memories. Her artistry in both hot sculpting and blown techniques are propelled through her celebrated Watermelon series, which speaks to the salad days of her youth spent enjoying Australian summers. Young, who remains based in Adelaide, creates works that are uniquely South Australian. She references local icons like the Balfours Frog Cake and Menz Fruchocs. Alongside these familiar favourites from Young’s burgeoning career, Pop Mart features new works like sandblasted slices of Smiley Fritz and a jumbo sized jar of Vegemite.

Emma Young, Frog Cakes, 2021. Photo: Michael Haines. — Emma Young, *Frog Cakes,* 2021. Photo: Michael Haines.

ChiliPhilly, I Can Do It, 2015. Photo: the artist. — ChiliPhilly, *I Can Do It*, 2015. Photo: the artist.

Phil Ferguson (better known by their online alter-ego ChiliPhilly) is another artist who is creating food sculptures that are larger than life. The Melbourne-based crochet-crafter is widely recognised for their culinary-themed crochet hats. These blown up, pillowy constructions are made to be worn by the artist, then captured as self-portraits and shared through social media. ChiliPhilly combines well-developed craft-skills with the accessibility of social media (137k Instagram followers and counting) to create and share relatable work to wider audiences. Pop Mart recontextualises Ferguson’s output in a physical gallery space, while encouraging the artist to make and present for the first time MiniPhillys. In a nod to Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans, ChiliPhilly makes smaller, can-sized versions of their headpieces and outfits in response to a commercial demand for their labour-intensive, one-off art pieces.

This assessment of artistic value is also explored by Adelaide-born artist, now based in Melbourne, Sophia Nuske. When Victoria was the epicentre of Australia’s second wave, Melbourne went into a 111 day hard lock down, which compelled Nuske to assess what was valuable to her. For Pop Mart she has created a new installation titled Legal Tender, which like ChiliPhilly’s work, straddles the realms of both the physical and the digital. Designed to interrogate the meaning of money as an object in and of itself, Nuske creates a series of realistic coin sculptures equating to $111 (a dollar for each day of the lock down). She reflects on how, despite the colloquial term of ‘printing money’ often cited as the panacea for a shrinking economy, the pandemic has accelerated our cashless society. Physical coins and notes have become increasingly rare commodities. Nuske’s work comments on the deeper connection and human interaction she craved during lockdown – above money or consumer objects. She states:

I chose to reconnect with things that remind me of what it means to be a sensory, sentimental being; to hold a sense of how I, as a singular unit, fit into a larger universal experience.

Audiences are encouraged to scan the now ubiquitous QR code created by Nuske to engage with the artist directly. Nuske’s sentiments echo what ultimately each of the artists of Pop Mart remind us - that the world cannot forget how much art, design, craft and culture are deemed as essential goods.

The relatability of these works incite an instant connection. Where Nuske calls attention to the bombardment of media in our lives, urging us to step away from consumerism and reconnect with one another, Ferguson, Pittock and Young appropriate familiar imagery because they are fond of it. It sparks joy. Thus, Pop Mart represents a critique and a celebration of consumer culture, highlighting the conditions and contradictions of modern life.