Brain Food #835: When lists become art
Our common strangeness
Thoughts of the day
Australian-based artist Kenny Pittock worked at a Melbourne supermarket in 2003, partly to sustain his artistic practice. In the end, his job also provided unlikely inspiration for his art.
“During my shift working in the dairy section at a supermarket in 2003 the manager told me that milk is generally the last thing a shopper will get before leaving the store and so it's also the place they abandon their shopping lists. Part of my job was to dispose of the abandoned lists but instead I started collecting them. The 52 lists I've replicated here through kiln fired ceramics and painting all feature milk, and were all found during the weekend of April 22-24, 2016, while working at Casey Central collecting trolleys. Each list functions as both a poem and a portrait, offering a glimpse into the people we pass in the supermarket.”
The result was a piece called 52 shopping lists written by people who need milk, recreated into detailed ceramic reproductions from the originals.
All lists are unique, and deeply personal, but also quite similar in their contents. By looking at them, as Frida Kahlo suggested, we can all feel less alone through our common strangeness:
“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me, too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you.”
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