Shopping lists

Some years ago, Ingrid Swenson began collecting found shopping lists from the same North London Waitrose. Enlightening and funny, fascinating, and poetic, these private notes to self-detailing someone’s weekly shop – rocket and antibacterial wipes, treacle and prawns, fags and milk – invite us to speculate on and imagine the private universes of their authors. They are, in effect, domestic haikus, scribbled on the back of letters and bills. Having formed the basis of an exhibition at the Art Workers’ Guild in 2017, ‘Shopping Lists’ documents a consuming fascination – of both Swenson’s and her subjects’ – providing an amusing, insightful, and occasionally profound insight into the lives of ordinary Londoners.