image of the author’s bike and some carrots at Goldsmiths
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I need to write about this as I’m tbh still fuming and can’t believe it happened. Unfortunately, it sits in the intersection of food and art so I am multidimensionally pissed off.
In early October an MA Fine Art student at Goldsmiths arranged the dumping of 29 tonnes of carrots at the entrance of the university building in the style of Global South farmer protests. As a visual stunt it was hugely successful as Rafael Perez Evans is now the darling of the 2020 degree shows and has interviews in most national culture magazines.
As time goes on I have become increasingly hardened by the never-ending series of empty performances that people do for attention in the artworld, to the point where I’m almost never surprised and sometimes can even have a little laugh. Not this though, it ruined my week. There is some insidious energy at play here and I need to work through it.
Having never written an art review, and only the rare angry email, it’s a new sensation and challenge for me to try and formulate a constructive argument around something I disagree with so strongly, specifically without attacking the artist personally. It’s important to be aware of the backlash effect on them. Although they will be getting plenty of attention and interview requests, they don’t deserve to receive threats of any kind (which I’ve heard there have been some). No-one does. It’s safe to assume they foresaw this and planned to batten down the hatches after the big drop, and it’s totally fair to protect themselves, but I cannot agree that they are absolved of criticism in a sort of ‘don’t-shoot-the-messenger’ scenario.
For someone who sucks at linear storytelling, it’s often hard to know where to start, so I’m really up against it now. The installation’s meaning seems a logical place to start as that has already been ascribed by the artist, and while there’s a lot of naff artspeak in the accompanying text, here’s a neat-ish summary from their website.
“The produce in the piece are unwanted carrots, carrots that the food industry in the UK deems not worthy of shelves, the full 29 tonnes of vegetables will be collected after the exhibition and sent to feed animals. This site-specific intervention offers itself as a sculptural exercise in grounding, ‘bringing back to earth’ some of the dissociative and opaque practices of the metropolis and the university industrial complex.”
https://rafaelperezevans.com/grounding/
The artist has given very little information about the circumstances in which they acquired the carrots, so my first impression is that they have not done their research or are purposefully withholding it. Where are the carrots from? Who did they contact to intercept the “unwanted” haulage? Do they understand why they have been deemed “unworthy”? It’s no small feat to organise such a dumping, so it’s surprising to say the least that they’re not literally bragging about the details. With an operation this complicated, containing so many potential agents and processes, it’s flummoxing that it has been reduced to a singular vague sentence.
The journey from farm-to-fork is already very convoluted; as a consumer we have no idea of the litany of agents and processes the food goes through. I can’t help but feel this has become increasingly obfuscated as part of a neoliberal agenda to decouple our knowledge about basic food growing and to introduce a convenient dependency on supermarkets (and other corporations) as provider.
The cost of this operation is quite key too. Should this have cost £2000, as I’ve heard from a few insiders, this further muddies the water. Who is the artist paying and how does this relate to the wholesale value of the carrots to the farmers, or to their hypothetical shelf value in a supermarket? The abstraction does the artist a favour in drawing attention to how breaking the invisible chain of food waste somehow creates extra layers of admin and costs to the consumer.
Did the artist consider not making the artwork and donating the fee directly to a foodbank or charity, rather than a private haulage company? Shows how hard some find it to back out when heaps of money and your reputation is on the line. Sounds similar to the Conservatives tbh.
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The main source of angst for me is the obvious food waste and how this looks in the socio-economic landscape of Lewisham. In a borough with 37% of children suffering food poverty and twelve local food banks - including one less that two hundred metres from the installation - the biggest kick in the teeth is how flippant the artist has been in their actions. For such a large, confident gesture, there’s no critical substance and a blank refusal of responsibility to make even an attempt to say something of value. In my opinion it’s incredibly cynical that the overarching visual message of this installation is that ‘food waste happens’. I’ve spoken to some sympathisers who are happy that it has brought acute awareness to this issue - if the artwork hadn't been conceived we wouldn’t be talking about it - and I think this is slightly condescending to the viewer in assuming they have never thought about it until now. If you live in London and you haven’t yet noticed the shocking amount of food waste, or considered the privatisation of abundance, where even is your head?
I have a slight conflict of interests. I’m doing the artist a big favour here, along with many other voyeurs and commentators, in getting angry about the missed opportunities buried under the carrots. By demonstrating rage, unlocking new discussions and creating fresh, emotional arguments, am I doing the work the artist was too lazy to do, or was this engagement planned all along? Because it boils down to a huge, flat orange image, there is a popular argument that the artwork is successful in providing a framework for conversation around food waste and neoliberalism. The artwork lacks critical investigation into the politics of this image.
It’s very problematic to me that there is no documentation of labour or ownership, the names of the farmers, landowners, pickers, machiners, drivers have not been researched. Not that I use supermarkets, but I’m pretty sure the grower and region have been printed on packaging for a while now. We actually cannot even assume that the carrots are grown in Britain, or in fair working conditions, or without pesticides. I was also thinking about how non-committal the info in the artist’s text is, that they will be “collected after the exhibition and sent to feed animals”. This cover-all disclaimer is only serving to assure the viewer they won’t get dumped into landfill, but I question whether I can believe even that far, and again who will be doing the work?
There is also the defence that we should redirect our anger to the corporations who have made this artwork possible: supermarkets, food standards agencies, Goldsmiths itself. And while this is a valid point, it leads to a comfortable read of this installation, with the artist holding a lens up to injustices, without stating an emotional or political response. We lack information about the particular governing body who deemed the carrots inedible, or the supermarket that rejected them in the first place, how are we meant to know who to boycott? I also genuinely don’t agree that you can only be angry in one direction.
Goldsmiths University is complicit in the execution of this project, as with all installations that take place on its’ grounds, although it’s rumoured the artist understated the amount of carrots: another obfuscation? In order to approve any exhibition, particularly around food, there are strict health and safety guidelines that must be complied with. Supposedly this is another reason it was made so clear that the carrots are “NOT FIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION” using A4 printed warnings stuck on the glass-fronted Ben Pimlott building, facing out. In a way this emboldens the ludicrous nature of the rejection. Some adjacent hand-written signs ask “SAYS WHO?”
There is an overbearing sense of hopelessness that is being framed and communicated here, which (maybe inadvertently) perpetuates negativity. The sentiment is: the artist can shine light on this irreversible problem but not affect it. I, if you didn’t already garner from the text up until this point, wholeheartedly refute this.
Having run a food justice project in Brixton for two years, transforming surplus food into pay-what-you-can vegan lunches, I know that a pile of carrots represents a myriad of exciting recipes, flavours, exchanges. Ask anyone working in the soup kitchens or food banks or prisons or schools or restaurants or homeless shelters or care homes or cafes in Lewisham how they would react to a pile of carrots. It certainly wouldn’t be with despondency.
I want to start concluding this critique for brevity, and there’s a beautiful outcome from this shitshow. A group of BA students who also attend the uni were so outraged, they immmediately put up a stall next to the installation.
“Ignoring a sign which says the carrots are ‘not for human consumption’, students who believe the artwork is a waste of resources are putting the veg to use, baking vegan cakes which are sold from a stall next to the pile.”
https://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/18768327.goldsmiths-students-bake-cakes-carrots-dumped-campus/
All money spent on the stall - primarily cash deposited in a no-touch box - was destined for projects tackling food poverty in the same postcode. They moved with urgency and purpose, turning up for five days in a row with bakes and soups, demonstrating tight self-organisation skills and clear vision. I’m enthused that their reaction was to do the work they feel should have been done by the artist. In activating the artwork with love, they cut through the mud and expose the stunt. It’s the ultimate critique, really.
The potency of this food justice action further illustrates this colonial idea that Art and Life are separate, that they are distinct bodies representing each other infinitely in a hall of mirrors. This perpetuates the cynical use of Art to ‘reflect’ Life without committing to make positive changes. In being apolitical the flat orange image is slippery and begins to follow an upward coefficient, transcending the need for even a single word of explanation. The escape from accountability is one of the last remaining magic tricks to be debunked.
*like to add a data correction, I said 3 billion tonnes at the bottom. It's 3 million.
Without wanting to create tension I'd like to disagree Sean. I understand your personal affect from the piece, I can't deny that emotion you've had to this piece you have so much invested time and knowledge into food, distribution and justice that you have this completely valid response which I enjoyed reading, but I'd like to offer another side. Not even to deffend the artist, but I guess more in the defense of an art.
For like you when I first saw the piece I had a bit of an instant gut reaction to the food. I read around abit and stewed my own thoughts.
Reading here from dazed – Titled “Grounding”, the artwork by Rafael Pérez Evans isn’t about eyesight or coronavirus, it turns out. Instead, it takes inspiration from a form of protest performed by farmers in Spain and France, called “dumping”. For Pérez Evans, who was born in the countryside of southern Spain, this act is something of a recurring theme.
Really here I see the artwork being the lens we are being offered to, like you say, critique neoliberalism, and the realtionship between farmers and food distributors, supermarkets etc. Looking further into the act of 'dumping' you see a much larger protest happening regularly in Spain amongst other places.
Obviously there's a trick that's been missed as well, as the protest isn't always empty and flat. As in this story > https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2011/6/8/spanish-farmers-dump-produce-in-protest
But ultimately this is happening alot > https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2014/11/french-farmers-grow-angry/100847/
Prices for farming are collapsing (you don't need me to tell you about any of this) and I guess part of the large gesture that has been made here in New Cross is the invisbility about this story, and the performance of art.
Was Evans to have been there to stand next to the piece pressing carrot juices for everyone, or to be over commenting suggesting he was a farmer and this was his wasted crop the piece would feel inauthentic. Instead it drops unexpectantly and then allows the witnesses to start building a story and a narrative around it. Which it has, it's been taken on by local activists to use it as a tool for the escalating food justice and poverty campaign. It's allowed me (and I'm sure others) to look further into the protest of an international farming community, and it can potentially also critique the materiality of others making art.
I guess the problem for me is that under your critique all art uses 'wastes' a material of some kind. Be in clay, or stone, bronze, wax, PLASTIC even paint. Art is quite often grossly material. But it severs the narrative between itself and the materials it uses. It displays these pieces as art, 'dumping' them in vaults and white galleries around the world, huge tracts of material just lost.
In some cases it gives more that it takes, or as much. And offers that lens to let us question, and debate what that material means, what stories is it prodding.
I guess the only critique I have here of their piece is that it isn't forthcoming enough with this story that 'we' understand. Some cleverly placed press releases could have done this work for them. Instead, the conversation has largely been on the carrots, or the paint which I don't imagine was the intention completely. But to an art outsider just looking at it once, this might be all they see. But then again maybe not. I wouldn't want to second guess what the person on the street walking by or sitting on a bus thought of this. And I think alot of the press has been quite one dimensional.
I know this piece has been an unwanted trigger for you, but unfortunately far more than this is being dumped everywhere, every year more food rots in the fields than we can collect because of a failed food harvest and distribution system. Here Evans dumped 29 tonnes of carrots, yet the figure of food wasted in the UK is closer to 3billion tonnes, I just can't even contemplate this amount of food. Personally I believe this piece is offering something to this larger conversation.