From January to August 2017, artist Louise Ashcroft was in residence off-site at Westfield Shopping Centre in Stratford, East London, as part of arebyte’s 2017 programme, Control.

Louise’s research trips revolved around the marketing strategies used in fashion, retail and shopping culture; from the language used for branding and advertisements, to the architecture of shopping environment and the emotional impact of the shoppers and visitors.

The work made includes signs featuring T-shirt slogans, T-shirts from Westfield, 'Mallopoly' card games to play in the mall, biodegradable burger boxes, grime track, and videos.

The title of the residency, 'Stratford Works', is the name of a locomotive building workshop formerly based on the Stratford City site. In 2015 Louise Ashcroft gave a humorous (but deadly serious) TEDx talk chronicling her unofficial residency at Stratford Centre, an unglamorous 1970s shopping precinct located directly opposite the huge Westfield mall.

Ashcroft analysed the centre's marketing philosophy of "taking something negative about yourself and owning it" and applied this strategy to a variety of London-wide interventions. This new residency extends Louise's shopping centre research, this time focussing on the enormous, gleaming Westfield Mall and the cultural ecosystems within which it operates

Responding to her fieldwork in the Westfield shopping centre in Stratford, Louise translated slogan T-shirts (view T-shirt research) into traditional signs which she painted by hand following a public workshop she co-led at arebyte Gallery with sign painter Hannah Matthews. The signs transform the language of the fast fashion slogan t-shirts into the visual language of boat signage found on the neighbouring River Lea. The show also featured videos and a grime rap track made in collaboration with grime artist Maxsta which took lyrics from an Argos catalogue found in the shopping centre, linking commercial description with the lyrical traditions of the Stratford-born rap genre. Scroll down to see the videos and hear the track. Louise also made a shopping centre based game offering strategies for retail subversion available free to exhibition visitors and handed out at the mall, and led retail therapy sessions and a public tour in the shopping centre.

Playing in the space was a grime track Louise wrote acclaimed rapper Maxsta. Listen to it online here. Louise wrote the lyrics using words cut out of the Argos shopping catalogue during her shopping centre residency in Stratford, the area where the grime music genre originated. Unlike some commercial rap, grime is often anarchic and political- more likely to question consumerism and power than glorify it. In this track, grime is used to reinterpret product descriptions to create a playfully subversive nonsense narrative. If you want an mp3 copy please email Louise.

At the culmination of her research in August, Louise presented a series of artworks at arebyte in Hackney Wick, a five-minute walk from Westfield Stratford.

Grimy Goods: Louise compiled words from the shopping catalogues in Westfield to create a cut-up text, which will be recorded as a track by local grime artist Maxsta. Westfield was built on top of an important grime venue and the area of E3 is the home of this influential music genre. This track was played in the exhibition and performed live by Maxsta. Listen to the track here.

Deviant Planning Committee: Collaborating with UCL students at The Institute for Global Prosperity, Louise is compiling an inventory of deviations; ways to use the Olympic Park other than what the architects, council, businesses and planners had in mind. This will be presented as a map with diagrams.


Read the exhibition's accompanying essay: How Not To Shop by Regine Debatty

EVENTS PROGRAMME

#SIGNS
April 2017
Louise worked with specialist sign painter Hannah Matthews to lead a workshop in which participants painted traditional narrow boat signs using words and phrases from fashionable slogan T-shirts found in Westfield, such as 'Sorry not sorry', 'I won't answer your texts' or 'Like is the new love', in lieu of boat names. Mass-produced languages of fast fashion were slowed down through this handmade process, which is traditionally used to christen boats Destiny, Dawdler or Narrow Escape (these are a few that frequent the river at Hackney Wick). Louise made dozens of these boat signs, which were displayed in the exhibition and then gifted to boats along the Stratford waterways after the show.

Artist Happy Meals
Louise Ashcroft and collaborators redesigned the ‘happy’ toys given away with fast food in the shopping centre. Visitors to the Food Hall at Westfield emailed a photograph of their fast food toy and their address and were sent an artist-designed toy instead, ones which demonstrated a more complex range of emotions. Designs and prototypes were displayed as part of the exhibition.

Retail Therapy 
During Louise's residency she ran a Retail Therapy service. Shoppers were invited to join her for hour-long explorations of their psyche using the shopping centre and its contents as props for a series of psychological games.

Mallopoly
Louise's capitalism-questioning card game, Mallopoly was handed out in the shopping centre and gallery. The game sets challenges for the shoppers which antagonise the systems and structures of the mall.

READ THE EXHIBITION BOOKLET