“YOU ALL sit around a table and somebody will buy this small packet of crisps, which ultimately is enough for one person. And yet you split the packet open onto the table like it’s a feast.” I’m speaking to ceramic artist Alma Berrow over the phone a week after the opening of her current solo exhibition at Lamb Gallery.
Renowned for ‘fake-real’ ceramic works that are at once revolting and inviting, this is Alma’s third solo show with the London-based gallery. Taking influence from folklore and celebrating acts of community through food, this body of work is a homage to her childhood and suggests a departure from the party culture – ashtrays filled with cigarettes, cocaine, and bank cards – she has so often depicted.
Aptly titled The Opening of a Crisp Packet, the name of the exhibition was inspired by the idea that, in London, people will attend anything. “You know that quote that’s like ‘oh she’d go to anything, she’d go to the opening of an envelope’? I was talking to a friend and he said, ‘oh, I’d go to the opening of a packet of crisps.’ And I found that so funny. I’m about to leave London to go back to Dorset, where I grew up, and it’s an ode to this idea of socialising here, that people will go to anything. So I thought, you know what, I’m going to invite people to the opening of a crisp packet.”
