Trolley Spotting
2005 – ongoing, web based
Trolley Spotting started back in 2003 when I kept noticing abandoned shopping trolleys around the area where I lived in north London; I decided to start documenting these. I was then selected for the group touring exhibition Day-to-Day Data which was to take place at Angel Row Gallery in Nottingham, Aspex Gallery in Portsmouth and Danielle Arnaud contemporary art in London. This was my opportunity to formalise the work I had been doing and to go out and explore new cities.
For each of the exhibitions I made new work, so would arrive in the city and, for one day, I would go for a walk and document the trolleys I spotted along the way – I used a wrist mounted GPS system to note the co-ordinates of the trolley, I took photographs and noted how far the trolley had travelled from its home supermarket. This information was put together as a website offering a virtual walk around the city, where the visitor can spot the trolleys for themselves. In addition to this, I worked with a supermarket local to each gallery and tagged their trolleys for the duration of the exhibition.
In 2006 Trolley Spotting won the Yahoo Finds of the Year Award in the Weird and Wonderful category, which generated a great deal of interest from the press and resulted in my appearing on many radio shows and live on BBC News 24 and Sky News. I am in the process of planning the next stage of Trolley Spotting, and hope to develop it further, going to new cities and possibly expanding internationally.
External Links:
Trolley Spotting
Day-to-Day Data
Trolley Spotting Flickr Group – add your own!
Yahoo Award
BBC interview
