Born and Bread

At our AGM last year our ever enterprising Barry Midgley (member of Yorkshire Sculptors Group) suggested we take ourselves to the big smoke (i.e. Landan Daalin!)

But we were going to do it the Yorkshire way. Would we make our sculptures form the finest marble? or carve them from the finest ceadarwood? Nope - for us it would be the humble loaf.

Hmm, well after much discussion we agreed to support each other through this challenging process. Each time we met up there were displays of the worlds tiniest loaf, bread which had been genetically spliced, holey bread and no bread but just groans of despair at the failure to be inspired by this more common yet complicated material.

After many months of hmm'ing and haa'ing I was struck with an idea. I would leave my material is the hands of my estranged neighbours - if they responded I would have an object if not I would have work without the object - either way my neighbours were sure to be surprised and hopefully moved in some way by my actions.

I wrote a letter of request for a slice of bread and the year and city of birth and posted it to 30 neighbours.
Everyday I skipped home wishing and hoping not for a cheque or a letter telling me I'd been selected but for a slice of bread. As they stacked in my freezer I felt the joy of being presented with the most valuable gift as each new slice fell through the letter box.

After three weeks I had nine slices. I preserved them and used letraset to apply the names and dates to the slices and filed them as if they were an encyclopedia or collection of reference books.

When the show in London finished I delivered a print to all of the neighbours who I had invited to take part in this project. Their responses ranged from smiles and words of delighted gratitude to folding my print in half and shoving it in their pocket!

Later Terry Hammil took our work to ANTIFREEZE in Manchester where we won best artwork in show - yay to the bread sculptors!!! You can see images of more of the work at the London and Manchester show on the links below.

Received bread, letraset, PVA glue
June 2009
Chelsea Gallery London,
ANTIFREEZE Manchester
ANTIFREEZE blog