Essay: Navigating Consumerist Realms In Contemporary Art

An interesting change has gripped society in the past ten years. An activity like walking down Oxford Street once meant being bedazzled by each store’s window display - all of which eagerly adopted the mantra of ‘the bigger, the better’. For today’s Londoners (and Oxford Street Wanderers), enjoyment looks rather different and is - more often than not - packaged in a tiny digital screen as we instead immerse ourselves in the displays on our phones. Funny that. Have we completely transferred our joy of flânerie to the digital space and lost our habits? Surprisingly, these thoughts don’t hit me while wandering down Bond Street or strolling outside Selfridges, but rather when I'm exploring exhibitions. Many of which, I've noticed, reflect on the ambiguous allure of consumption.

Diving into the consumerist world of Swiss artist Sylvie Fleury at her comprehensive retrospective at the Sprüth Magers gallery last autumn, I found myself in a curious optical game. The ground floor of the gallery - with its expansive windows overlooking Dover Street - featured her iconic branded bag sculptures from the 1990s alongside her latest work, No Man’s Time (2023). This new piece revisited her earlier bag sculptures, presenting an image of Fleury herself printed on a mirror, leaning over one of her branded bag sculptures. While I was immersed in my own reflection, passers-by from Dover Street might easily perceive me as a mannequin and simultaneously witness my ‘observed of all observers’ moment - a true play on perception. But is this what Fleury wanted?

A similar dialogue between viewer and art, art and fashion, and the process of consumption was explored in Atelier EB's ‘Faux Sports Shop’ installation at Cromwell Place earlier this year. For just nine days in February, viewers encountered the collective’s latest fashion collection, Big Tobacco, which prompted the resulting question from many: Is this an art installation or a genuine fashion collection? And, more importantly: Does Atelier EB (made up of designer Beca Lipscombe and the artist Lucy McKenzie) identify more as art enthusiasts or fashion consumers?

The installation continued Atelier EB’s discourse on consumerist culture which had originally started with their research project Atelier E.B: Passer-by. The project’s ulterior motive was to make it clear we are all consumers of fashion, not only when adding items to cart, but also when we pass by windows displays, scroll our news feeds in search of inspiration, and search the ever popular TikTok hashtag ‘GRWM’.

Indeed, in the age of glamour, we no longer clearly perceive the boundaries of consumption, as the nature of the objects we consume is constantly changing. According to Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, we consume both online and offline, while walking outside and at home, awake and in dreams - not to satisfy our needs, but rather to follow our desires, making those desires objects of consumption. Unable to keep track of the constant flow of information, where content is created for its own sake regardless of quality, we exist through consumption or become objects of consumption ourselves - unless we manage to ‘consume’ ourselves from the inside out by that moment.

Such themes were evident in artist Woodsy Bransfield's exhibition at Neven Gallery last autumn, where the artist presented a hundred pairs of pale-pink Bransfield sunglasses, which were eagerly claimed by guests at the exhibition's opening. Wearing Bransfield’s glasses was no longer about owning a work of art as an object; rather, it was an opportunity to look alike and feel assured that one belonged to a desired community, one that recognised you as a regular gallery opening attendee. By looking at everything through the same lenses, guests not only viewed the world in the same shades but also dissolved into a space of mutually approved gaze and validation. If they were running after this self-pleasure, I can only suggest they were simultaneously running from something else that might reappear when the glasses are taken off…

Presenting such an ambiguous allure of consumption certainly wasn’t lost on Gnossienne Gallery either, whose most recent exhibition Haute Références detailed the work of artist Nayan Patel and his focus on shopping bags - which can be seen as a nod to the work of Sylvie Fleury. Patel also delves into the depths of consumerist desires in a tactile manner, exploring what lies behind them by transforming these found objects through the layering of acrylics and cutting out phrases in place of brand names. As our desires sometimes linger in the darkness, it is here that shadows reveal some truths behind impulses.

The experience of immersing in your own reflection in window displays while looking at desired objects is echoed in I.W. Payne's work Off the Peg, a term synonymous with ready-to-wear clothing - which takes us back to a time when people were seduced by shopping window decorations. Her piece is a vintage shop display stand that features a spiral stage and a mannequin silhouette with wavy short hair and a bias-cut, floor-length dress—reminiscent of a 1930s Hollywood actress style. In that era, theatre and film artists often designed department store window displays. For instance, architect and theatre designer Frederick Kiesler worked on displays for Saks Fifth Avenue in 1928, adding huge amounts of depth by arranging highlights and shadows. With spotlighting from above, his headless mannequins seemed to move towards the viewer, with deepening shadows emphasising this effect. Similarly, Payne's work captivates us with a familiar silhouette, compelling us to follow to the other side.

Perhaps it is the silhouette reflected that merges with the mannequin, inviting us into that space to uncover what lies hidden in the dark. Her work with mannequins as guides to the backside of consumerist habits and the unconscious state of shopping continues in another recent exhibition - commissioned as part of London Gallery Weekend by Gallery 243 Luz at The Shop, Sadie Coles HQ, where two silhouettes exchange remarks that do not reflect the joyful pleasure of shopping, but rather all the nervousness that this experience can uncover. Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff's worn handbag interiors are also documented here, similar to a crime scene. The bags, which are usually full of things we pretend to need, are seen here totally empty, as if they were brand new. It made me think that for many, having a bag is more important than what you carry with you; the bag is the necessity, not the contents inside.

Although fashion’s obsession with art collaborations is well-documented, the art world’s response in turn has been much more transactional (it is of course, well-known that fashion’s budgets were going to sway the art world eventually, one way or another). But this isn’t about money. It’s about status. Not only that but desire, too: questioning the unquantifiable cost of fulfilling our desires, whether financially or philosophically. This year alone has seen countless exhibition’s centred around fashion and consumption and we’ve only just got to summer. If one thing rings loud and clear, it’s that all these reflections on consumerism in the works of contemporary artists today serve as a reminder of our ability to perceive the boundaries and spaces of consumption, while bringing fresh perspectives to our habits and revealing patterns we have long ceased to notice.