BOGOF, 2016

Launched at The Peculiar People, 2016, Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea
Focal Point Gallery

BOGOF, 2016, Double sided digital print on pearlescent paper, 76 x 56.5cm, printed in an edition of 35

BOGOF (Buy One Get One Free), 2016, is the second of two related commissions from Focal Point Gallery. The first Save Southend-on-Sea Central Library (2009) was shown in Savoir Faire, 2009.

BOGOF is designed double sided to offer it’s collectors viewing choice. It is a purposely hypocritical response to the original commission – a purposely lukewarm campaign to save Southend’s Central Library within which Focal Point Gallery was then situated. It was earmarked for demolition. The library was relocated to a new building shared with Essex College. Both library and gallery exist in a newly gentrified state; the gallery is housed in a space exactly the size of a Tesco Local should its funding ever fall through.

BOGOF text reads:

“CELEBRATING THE NEW SOUTHEND-ON-SEA CENTRAL PANTHEON /:)
FOR EVERYONE & EVERYTHING, WITHOUT JUDGMENT ABOUT USERS PERSONAL TASTE OR HYGIENE#
Stepping up to the global race, Southend-on-Sea Borough Council has delivered an innovative successor to Victoria Avenue’s now redistributed Central Library – THE FORUM. A ‘thought park’, powerful Image-Mirage and Contemporary Centre of Learning, Academic Excellence and Research Culture, this is a new everything-you-could-wish-for PEOPLE POINT® in Southend-on-Sea’s new Education Quarter©.
Set in the newly landscaped Elmer Pizza1, the development also provides a new home for Focal Point™ Gallery, a fooderie, Tesco Xpress, pop-up champagne bar and an elephantine outdoor LED display screening local & international cultural activities as well as major sporting   events2.
Responding to Fluid Usage©, it was designed to cater into the future and beyond, and unlike civic buildings of the past, it could be re-allocated as a university building, apartments, hotel, or even a shopping mall; outward facing, it’s an adaptable space and can move with the times – it represents REA£ VALUE-FOR-MONEY for the council.
SOUTHEND FORUM – For Costa Coffee cake lovers and those who crave Yo Sushi.
1. Elmer Piazza is a designated ‘no drinking zone’ by the council. Also prohibited in event enclosures are gazebos, BBQ’s, wooden chairs or tables etc.
2. Polo, boules and Opera from the Met etc.
# Please note the Education Quarter© is a specified Hygienic compound; all users must refrain from entering the area unless they are both aromatic and hold a subscription∞
∞ to the dream”

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