Morrisons Valebat Parvulis, (Morrisons Availed Little) is a mobile archive and a ceremonial, vehicular monument to boredom.

Escaping from reality is nothing new, people have always engaged in willful dissociation - on their own terms. During a global pandemic that has claimed all sense of normalcy, thinking of life as a form of durational performance or ‘endurance’ art offers a feeling of necessary distance and the illusion of control.

Things are different now, and in the vacuum left behind we rush to fill our (much smaller) lives with habits - this is how we defend ourselves in the face of the yawning monotony of lockdown. These habits take on an obsessive, ritualistic quality. After all, what else is there to do? Memes thrive, everyone talks about their mental health with a hitherto unheard of candor and frequency. Hobbies blossom and wane, we collect things for no reason- just in case anyone in the future might ask us what it was like to live through this strange time. “What was COVID like grandma?” they’ll ask, and we can bring out the memory box from under the bed, dust it down and tell a tale of sorrow and bemusement using the language of worthless artifacts. Sourdough bread recipes on scraps of paper, screenshots from zoom quizzes, a crumpled medical mask- monogrammed with our initials or a little flower, receipts from Morrisons supermarket.

Buying things brings a fleeting flicker of joy and a much missed sense of purpose. Our relationship with the things we buy, what they are, how they make us feel and how often we acquire them, consolidates and intensifies. We envelop ourselves in a protective fort of amazon orders, cringing guiltily every time we think of how hard the delivery drivers must be working and how little they are paid- particularly in comparison with their overlord trillionaire CEO. But we live in an era of self-care and self-soothing and if there is a solution devoid of any such neoliberal indulgence then we are simply not practiced enough in the art to be able to make use of it.

And so, using the receipts collected from daily pilgrimages to Morrisons supermarket in January 2021 and an abandoned shopping trolley , Morrisons Valebat Parvulis creates a chariot of uniquely 21st century perversity. This vehicular coping mechanism is a way for the maladjusted adult baby to ride in style to his/her/their daily therapy visit to the local supermarket and is very much a testament to boredom and the dangers of what can happen when creativity meets a dead end.

Sublimation printed cotton-chenille blend, cotton bias binding, timber, shopping trolley - 2021