Substitutes for bread

Substitutes for Bread is the collective name for an ongoing series of salt dough (bread dough preserved with salt) sculpture in the form of Fasces, an ancient symbol of power and jurisdiction, later adopted as the emblem of the Italian Fascist Party. These Fasces are variations of wheatsheaf, bundles and bunches of wheat. They are held by belts, are burnt, billow, collapse in on themselves or constrained, displayed on the floor in clusters. The wheatsheaf masquerades as an object of harvest or labour offering, larping in pastoral idyl, a fetishised display of power and subordination. The salt dough has been kneaded and physically manipulated to take these forms.

Their title comes from the satirical print of James Gillray ‘Substitutes for Bread;–or–Right Honorables, Saving the Loaves, & Dividing the Fishes’ (London 1795) which satirises the greed of the ruling classes in Georgian Britain, and inequalities of the distribution of wealth. Where political policy inflicts physical restrictions and worsening social conditions of Austerity, post-Brexit Britain, the breadline and the price of a loaf of bread also set social standards, with spiralling inflation, cuts to social services, MP expense scandals and cronyistic government contracts, tax-evading and encroachment of policies which act against the social body.