Eeee, when I was a lad there was a cornershop at the end of the next street, run by a generic old couple (cheerful husband, battleaxe wife), that seemed to stock everything in the whole world – even though looking back the place could only have been 30 square metres. There was one of these shops at the end of nearly every residential street in the days before supermarkets, places where the bread was freshly delivered every morning and some of the canned food had been there since the ’50s. Halcyon days.
Lucy Sparrow obviously has a major soft spot for a bit of retail nostalgia too, as the Brit artist spent seven months faithfully recreating every aspect of a typical cornershop in textiles – even down to the Open All Hours till that threatens to wallop the operator in the solar plexus with every transaction. The headlines on the newspapers are fairly contemporary and the plastic-boxed sandwiches and feminine hygeine products place us in the now, but there’s a strong sense of bygone days about Cornershop. Now relocated from London to No Walls, Brighton and exhibited as Cornershop-by-the-Sea, Sparrow’s extraordinary creation (all 4,000 items) has been sold down to the last tin of Spam, but visitors to the show, which runs until 25 October, will find a selection of new works available to purchase.
