If you live in or near to Tunbridge Wells, a trip to the local Morrisons’ supermarket has just got a whole lot more interesting. As you browse the biscuits, mull over a frozen meal or pick up some dog food, you might come across one of only 500 copies of Simon Faithfull’s new artwork, Things, a 10cm square hardback book of his digital drawings.
The books are hidden throughout the store – they could be behind a bottle of squash, in the fresh veg aisle or squeezed between a multipack of baked beans. If you find one, you can buy it through the Morrisons’ till for just one pence. Faithful is still deciding what he wants the till receipt to print when one of his books is put through; ‘limited edition original artwork’ perhaps?
Only three copies a day will be secreted in the store over the next six months, and Faithfull is ensuring that they are not put on obvious display. He has deliberately hidden copies behind large items, sometimes two or three deep, so they are genuinely discovered by customers as they pick up the item in front.
Once found, what will a customer do? Faithfull hopes they won’t realise it’s an artwork, or at least not immediately. “I’m interested in how it is experienced before it’s filtered through prejudices,” he says. The central idea is that the book, made with love in a small quantity and virtually given away, makes a small disruption in a supermarket model which does the opposite – providing mass produced items that are sold for profit.
“It’s a rare commodity infiltrating a system of mass commodities,” says Faithfull. “I love books,” he adds, “they’re little containers of meaning that go out into the world, and they are the perfect delivery mechanism.” He is open about the customer response to the book – will they ignore it, browse it, buy it?
Sarah, one of Morrisons’ staff, is working with Faithfull to collect and dissect the data that the till receipts will provide. What does she think about the project? “Well, if they buy a few things as well as the book we’ll be happy,” she says, only half joking.
Digital drawings
Faithfull makes his digital drawings on an iPhone, using an application he commissioned programmer Jude Venn to make specifically for him. It emphasises the digital nature of the drawing, showing the pixels rather than attempting to disguise them. Out of this archive of 1073 drawings, Faithfull has chosen 500 images of items he possesses – including keys, a Guinness glass and a shrink-wrapped chicken.
Things is the latest public realm commission by the Hoodwink team, curators Polly Harknett and Susie Plumb. They have been working behind the scenes with Morrisons’ staff, ‘training’ them in how the book can be distributed within the store. “We want the staff to adopt the project,” says Harknett. “They’re part of the audience too.”
Hoodwink is a three-year programme of site-specific artists’ commissions in the public realm, deliberately placed in locations where art isn’t expected. Things is the fifth of nine commissions in the series, which began in 2012 and runs until 2015. Still to come are works by Hollington & Kyprianou, who are creating a commission for Wilko hardware store as part of the Folkestone Triennial Fringe, and a new work by Adam Chodzko, due in December 2014.
“We target non-users of museums and art galleries and expose them to contemporary art in the most unlikely, surprising and exciting of places,” says Plumb. “We place art in the middle of daily life.”
Things by Simon Faithful continues at Morrisons, Tunbridge Wells, until November. hoodwink.org.uk
