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Super Farmers' Market offers low-cost food for thought

Emma Love
Friday 11 June 2010 00:00 BST
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Super Farmers' Market, the second in a series of group exhibitions by London's Handel Street Projects opening next Friday, offered its artists an appetisingly playful brief. The 33 on the bill are each using low-cost supermarket goods, including food and discarded packaging, which they are "upcycling" by turning them into new pieces of work.

For Fedja Klikovac, director of Handel Street Projects, which operates in temporary spaces, the show is about exploring how food and art are both commodities. "We're playing with this idea that we treat food as a luxury in our consumerist society yet it's also a commodity. It's a problematic notion and in recent years art has become a big part of it, too," he explains in between painting the walls of the empty Holborn space he's using for the exhibition. "Some of the artists involved had an interest in food already but for others, they're stepping out from what they normally do; they're all making extraordinary art with ordinary ingredients."

It's resulted in some witty responses. Everything from a sack of potatoes (Braco Dimitrijevic) to beer cans (Sarah Lucas) and bread (Richard Deacon) has been used. And rather than being displayed on traditional art gallery plinths, there will be stacks of cardboard boxes for the work, to take the market stall concept even further.

Super Farmers' Market, Fri to 17 July (Handelstreetprojects.com)

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