Art From London Markets, a-n feature

So there is this magical thing, the way that we tell stories, the way we project ourselves into the lives of others and the way that those stories reflect back at us.

There is the moment a baby recognises his or herself in the mirror, when the concept of self is establishing and the self becomes a recognisable entity.  There is the development of visual and oral language, and the stories we tell with these, unlimited by the boundaries of truth, but often containing an element of it any way, even perhaps when meant as a disguise.  And towards the end of life for some people these narratives fade and become entangled while the people themselves are still alive, to the point when the person in the mirror is a stranger in the room, a slow loss of self.  For most of us this loss of stories and of self comes with death.

Because we can dissemble, even to ourselves, then, over a life time we “remember” somethings that are retold family stories and maybe we weren’t even there, or we remember a true moment in a way that is resonant only to ourselves, or we remember a truth, perhaps a real truth, that it is difficult to share.  And these memories, they make up ourselves, as we shape them we shape our being and in a sense they are us.   And when we share them we make our culture, our subjective collective reality.

I have been putting together a proposal for a temporary “Food Church” installation, exploring the ideas of food as sin as expressed in contemporary food and pop culture, and of the way that stories can be influenced by cultural prompts.  I will be asking for Food Confessions as well as food stories.  Iam interested in the power of language so will use text  in the space inviting people to donate a story, to help themselves to food and to give a food confession.  A confession is after all another kind of story, just with a particular moral inflection.