Stray Shopping Carts at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA)

Thirteen of my Stray Shopping Cart pieces are in a group shoe called Stocked: Contemporary Art from the Grocery Aisles at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA). It is a traveling exhibit that originated at the Ulrich Museum in Wichita. This is the curatorial statement:

Stocked: Contemporary Art from the Grocery Aisles presents the work of contemporary artists who, directly and indirectly, take the grocery store and consumption of its products as their subjects. In contrast to historic pop’s celebration of everyday consumption, they note the seductive aesthetic appeal of commercial products with degrees of uneasiness. Using a variety of styles and media, they keenly and cleverly interrogate not only the grocery items we purchase, but also the physical and psychological environments in which we shop, the individuals and social frameworks we encounter there, and the cultural norms that inform our habits of consumption.

There are some big names in the show including Sonny Assu, Scott Blake, Louis Cameron, Hillary Carlip, Adriane Herman
, David Hilliard, Damien Hirst, Christian Jankowski, Karyn Olivier
Lucy + Jorge Orta, Jonathan Seliger, Store Buyout: Matt Fidler, Jody Gnant, Hal Kirkland, Kyle MacDonald, and Gary Lachance, Brian Ulrich, Rachel Perry Welty, and  Andy Warhol.

There is also a nicely designed catalog. It is available on Amazon.

¡Stray Shopping Cart Project Now on Flickr!

Just so you know, I've just uploaded a lot of the content of my Stray Shopping Cart project website to to my Flickr page.

The Onion A.V. Club

The Onion A.V. Club puts my book on a list of impulse buy books that are worth keeping on the shelf.

Some iPhone shots from last week in Toronto

Stray Shopping Carts on Stage in Toronto

Thursday's performance at the Drake Hotel in Toronto went well, there were approximately 60 people for my piece, and they seemed to be into it. Jordan Tannahill, my director/collaborator, wisely booked the Cowgirl Choir to follow me, having 10 attractive women perform certainly helped to fill the place up. I really enjoyed me week in Toronto, it was great to make new friends and hang out on a new scene. Hopefully I will be doing more up there soon.

Stray Shopping Carts on Stage Tonight!

Tonight is my slide lecture/performance piece of the Stray Shopping Cart Project at the Drake Hotel. It's presented by Suburban Beast, a Toronto based performance art company. If you are in Toronto tonight please come to the show, it's only $5 and there are two bands after me.

Stray Shopping Carts on Stage

I'm in Toronto this week working on developing a slide lecture/performance piece with the Stray Shopping Cart Project. I'm working with Jordan Tannahill from Suburban Beast, a Toronto based performance art company. If you are in Toronto on Thursday please come to the show.

What they do with carts in Nova Scotia

Because of my Stray Shopping Cart Identification System, people often send me photographs and ask if they have gotten the I.D. right. The occurrence documented above is one of the most interesting I have ever received. Cam from Halifax, Nova Scotia sent this to me a couple weeks ago and wondered how to properly classify this assemblage he found behind a mall in Upper Tantallon, Nova Scotia. He noted that the carts are clearly A/1 Close False but that that A/8 Mixed Group didn't seem to apply because Source Agents were not involved. The answer is that it is an A/8 Mixed Group with B/12 Simple Vandalism as a secondary type designation. Class B types can be used as secondary designations for Class A specimens. However, there is a great deal of play in the system, considering the effort put into arranging the carts, the secondary designation could arguably be B/13 Complex Vandalism.

Shopping Carts in Antennae Magazine

I'm happy to say that there is an interview with me in the latest issue of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture. The interview is a fairly in depth discussion of the Stray Shopping Cart Project. Antennae is a online/PDF download publication that:

...combines a heightened level of academic scrutiny of animals in visual culture, with a less formal and more experimental format designed to cross the boundaries of academic knowledge, in order to appeal to diverse audiences including artists and the general public alike.

My own interests are very much in line with Antennae's. This latest issue is full of fascinating articles and interviews, so make sure you check it out.

Stray Shopping Cart Q&A at Found Clothing

The blog Found Clothing.com recently did a short Q&A with me about the Stray Shopping Cart Project, you can read it here. There is another recent interview with me about the project at Trap Door Sun.com. If you are not familiar with the project you can check it out here.

Rocket Powered Shopping Cart

A reader of my book, recently sent me these images of a rocket powered shopping cart. He accurately identified it as B/4 On/As Personal Property, B/8 Structurally Modified.

I've been Interviewed

There is an interview with me on the website Trap Door Sun. It's mostly about the Stray Shopping Cart Project.

Stray Carts in Gastronomica

I have a small article in the fantastic magazine Gastronomica: The Journal of Food & Culture, it's basically a short summary of the Stray Shopping Cart Project (written by me), and a two page spread of images (cropped a bit). I can't recommend the magazine highly enough, it's really cool.

Moving Forest

My friend Scott sent me a link to a blog post on this shopping cart project by NL Architects. It's an amazing idea.

A Stray Trolley Item from Down Under

I just received an email from someone in Australia who tipped me off to a service there called Trolley Tracker. Trolley Tracker encourages people to call a hotline and alert them to stray carts, er... I mean trolleys. For their efforts the caller is entered into a drawing for $1000. This sort of scheme has the potential to profoundly change the False Stray/True Stray dynamic. Check it out here.

More Blog Love

Cool, Core 77 posted about the Stray Shopping Cart Project, check it out here.

The Daily Heller on Stray Shopping Carts

I just found out that the indispensable Steven Heller wrote about the Stray Shopping Cart Project on his blog The Daily Heller today. Heller is the co-author of The Design Entrepreneurs, which has an interview with me in it. I previously posted about it here.

Sign/Age

I'm in a group show that opens on Thursday at Armand Bartos Fine Art in NYC. I'll be flying down tomorrow for the opening. The list of people in the show is absolutely insane, I can't believe that my name is on a list like this, it seems like a joke.

Arman
Mike Bidlo
Philip Lorca diCorcia
Wiliam Eggleston
Martha Friedman
Ralph Goings
Julian Montague
Claes Oldenberg
Thomas Pfannerstill
Daniel Pflumm
Danica Phelps
Michael Spano
Brian Ulrich
Andy Warhol
Tom Wesselman

Here is the long descriptive text from the gallery evite, it sounds like it's going to be a great show:

SIGN/AGE: Lost in the Supermarket
November 21 - December 19, 2008
Opening reception: Thursday, November 20, 6-8PM

Opening next week is the second in our three part SIGN/AGE series. Assembling works by artists from the Post-War period to the present, these exhibitions mine ideas and images from the rich arenas of advertising and consumerism. Since the Fifties, signs have become extremely complex, functioning not just to fulfill needs but to create them. Signs are designed to sell, and people are lined up to buy, because without our products who are we? Lost in the Supermarket includes works by artists that are in direct conversation with our consumer-based culture, taking on the subject from all angles.

Arman's Consumer Cascade installation is thirty shopping carts nested basket to basket, instead of end to end, forming a tidal wave sized arc that cascades down the gallery wall.

Mike Bidlo replicates a pair of Ballantine Ale cans, originally cast in bronze, and revives a joke by Jasper Johns on Leo Castelli in response to the oft quoted line by deKooning that "you could give that son of a bitch [Castelli] two beer cans and he could sell them."

At the height of the Jesse Helms era, Philip-Lorca diCorcia won an NEA grant and conceived of a project colloquially known as The Hustlers, and so doing tested the limits of public funding. Avoiding any real obscenity, he found his colorful subjects working the streets of the sunset strip, and hustler or not, paid them to take their picture. The work is titled according to each man's name, age and place of birth.

William Eggleston traveled across the country during the Seventies, taking pictures of the faded roadside. The saturated color of his dye-transfer prints exaggerate the bye-gone era effect in this photo of a steak billboard, blistered and peeling; advertising what, we are unsure.

Martha Friedman sees pattern and form in everyday objects. She breaks down the pattern and distorts the form, creating elegant and absurdist sculptures rich with historical references. For this exhibition we have two food works that transform ordinary supermarket items. Noodle is an oversized macaroni necklace so large you feel like the shrunken Alice in Wonderland, and Bangers is a bronze piece of linked sausages, stacked like Brancusi's Endless Column.

Since the Sixties, Ralph Goings has been making sincere still life paintings of diner counters, including catsup bottles, metal creamer pitchers, salt and pepper shakers, and the great American donut.

Moving beyond natural science's preoccupation with the biological, Julian Montague's Stray Shopping Cart Identification System has created a classification for further understanding of these stolen and repurposed urban vehicles.

Claes Oldenburg undermined the inhumane mechanics of industrial production when he opened up The Store. At this hand-made emporium you could buy anything from lingerie to lunch, all of which he produced with humble materials. Constructed with plaster and tempera we have several food items from that era.

Based in Kentucky, Thomas Pfannerstill whittles the detritus of modern culture into trompe l'oeil sculpture. Each piece is a one-to-one scale sculpture in wood, replicating trash from the street, including the story of its finding on the back of the work.

In this series of light boxes, Daniel Pflumm strips recognizable logos of their type, robbing them of their corporate brand identity. The process results in bold arrangements of hard-edged color, not unlike Ellsworth Kelly's shaped canvases.

We have two works from Danica Phelps' ten year project that recorded her daily activities, including red and green hash marks, representing every dollar earned and spent.

American culture is intricately connected to motorized vehicles. Michael Spano's most recent series, Auto Portraits, capture commuters in the sanctum of their cars, stuck in traffic, surrounded on all sides by the billboards, stores, and trucks, that keep the wheels of commerce greased.

Turning his camera on the big box store, photographer Brian Ulrich investigates the consumer landscape we inhabit. In the large-scale prints from the Copia series, products are stacked in modernist grid formation, and shoppers stare blankly at the endless merchandise in front of them. It is a symbiotic relationship that both buyer and inventory demands a purchase be made in order to be deemed of value.

Responsible for mechanizing the art-making process with his silk-screens, Andy Warhol replaces content with dollar bill signs, eliding his work with value, as if by repeatedly drawing this symbol of US currency he could mint money.

Tom Wesselmann's Still Life #48, with a three-dimensional Formica shelf, lifts a jar of Hellmann's mayonnaise and a perfectly ripe beefsteak tomato to iconic status.

These are the two pieces I have in the show.

A Holy Grail

I have not been actively shooting stray shopping carts for the couple of years, but on Wednesday I was riding my bike to the gym and I saw this just 2 blocks from my house. I turned around and sped back to the house to get a camera. I have been waiting for years to find one of these kiddie-car-carts on the streets, and now it has finally happened. Unfortunately, the setting is rather unspectacular (I was hoping to find one in the Scajaquada Creek), and the light conditions were not ideal, but it is probably about 3 miles from its Source which is remarkable. When I passed this corner on my way back from the gym, the cart was gone.

WTF I was Just Interviewed on a UK Radio Show that has 5 Million Listeners!

I just did a very short, very fast interview on BBC2's national Chris Evans Drive Time show, about my Stray Shopping Cart book. I got the email from a producer this morning, later he called, did a pre-interview and we set up the on air interview for 6:10 pm GMT. I subsequently learned that my book had been mentioned in a Guardian article about the "Oddest Book Title Prize" (I won last year). Apparently there was a picture of the cover in the print version. I guess they are doing a weird book week on the show. I'm familiar with who Evans is, when I lived in England in 1996 he had a very popular TV show that I kind of liked. The interview went OK, like all the radio interviews I've done, I am set up to be this weirdo and then I have to quickly explain that I am an artist, it's a conceptual project, etc. In this case Evans said something like: "and now we go to an interview with Julian Montague, a guy who loved shopping trolleys so much he wrote a book about them." Needless to say that's not how I prefer to frame my artistic practice. But I'm not complaining, he was way nicer than the BBC World Service team that interviewed me last year, no one does dismissive like the BBC news. I find it kind of surreal that I was just on a show with 5 million listeners.

This is Chris Evans