Super Farmers' Market

The first Farmers’ Market took place in London’s Wigmore Street in 2008, showcasing 24 producers, and was herded by farmer and de-curator Fedja Klikovac, Director of Handel Street Projects. And just as the weekly Farmers’ Market offers the discerning customer informed selections of the very best produce, so this annual version does with art, combining the idea of a selected exhibition as an exercise in connoisseurship with the recognition that art is nevertheless also a commodity. This year’s show, curated by two experts in the field, Mary Anne Francis and Lucy Heyward, is themed around the idea of ‘upcycling’: the current trend for taking low-grade artefacts that might be destined for landfill and enhancing their value by means of handwrought interventions. To this end, 32 artists have been asked to produce artworks using low-cost supermarket goods: groceries, cleaning materials and discarded packaging. Continuing the Farmers’ Market theme, artists are encouraged to resource their materials locally.

A group exhibition from Rasheed Araeen, Phyllida Barlow, David Batchelor, Stuart Brisley, Richard Deacon, Braco Dimitrijevic, Mary Anne Francis, Martino Gamper, Lucy Gunning, Lucy Heyward, Susan Hiller, Andy Holden, Koo Jeong-A, Ian Kiaer, Sharon Kivland, Darian Leader, Sarah Lucas, Hayley Newman, Tina O’Connell, Lucy Orta, Nicholas Pope, Giorgio Sadotti, Saso Sedlacek, Jane Simpson, Bob & Roberta Smith, Rasa Todosijevic, Zlatan Vukosavljevic, Richard Wentworth, Franz West, Alison Wilding, Gerard Williams, Elizabeth Wright.

Kivland exhibited works from her series entitled 'Mes buvards'. The play in the work here is on the re-presentation and on the word ‘buvard’ (both something that soaks up waste and promotes a product). The images from the buvards are particularly strange, and include usually the product with some facet of its supposed miraculous and transformative power.