fridge

The Arthouse Co-op runs many communal artistic projects, not just the Sketchbook Projects. I took part in the first in the Things Found Series, which asked creative people to take a photograph documenting the inside of their fridge.

This is mine, taken earlier this year, in about February, I think. In pride of place is the bottle of milk that we have delivered to our doorstep from a local dairy. I can see the ingredients for making one of our favourite lamb curries, caramelised onions for making Ragú, some pasta, tahini for making hummus and some chocolate puddings. There will have been veggies too (honest!), but in the bottom drawer.

It is quite fascinating peeking inside people's fridges. Some are almost entirely empty or only contain drinks. Do they always eat out? Did they just move in? Are they anorexic? Stories start spinning in my head.

One is full of rolls of film, another contains a rose. Some have playful scenes, like the one above with its smurf theatre creating a tiny comical drama. Some are perfectly ordered, some (like ours!) are a mess. Some are absolutely crammed full.

This one intrigues me: why all those boxes and boxes of eggs? There must be twenty dozen eggs there! Yet the rest seems fairly ordinary. What makes these images even more mysterious is that Arthouse Coop has decided not to include the contributors' names with each image. Unless the photographer has a Tumblr account and can add a note, the images remain anonymous, with a list of artists in a single post, here.

{photo by The Ordinary Instant}
Quite a number of cats decided or were encouraged to take part in the project. I'm drawn to these photos as I think that on the whole a feline presence enhances any image! But it also makes me a little squeamish: cat hair in the butter? I'm quite glad our Fafi has never shown any interest in our fridge!

I think this is such an interesting project. On its own, a single photograph of a fridge interior is absolutely banal, but somehow when accumulated like this it takes the viewer into a strange world of possible narratives.

It also reminds us how much we depend on our fridges - and that even when we don't, they are an essential part of almost every household. It seems fitting to end this post with the only photo I found of food not inside a fridge. What do you think the explanation is?

View all the fridge photos here.