The Guardian: "Jumble fever"

Caroline Sullivan talks to beatnik artist Martha Rosler about shopping as art Friday June 3, 2005 Martha Rosler is examining the contents of her first London solo exhibition, Garage Sale, which opens at London's ICA this weekend. One particular item among hundreds, all of which will be on sale to the public, has caught her eye. It is a children's toy, a little plastic alien entombed in a clear latex ball, purpose unknown. She finds it fascinatingly repulsive - "like a foetus in an egg" - and decides she has to have it. She gives the thing a squeeze, giggles little-girlishly and slips it into her handbag. She looks and sounds like the Brooklyn Jewish mother she is, though it would take courage to say it to her face ... It's rather like the clothing sales Elton John occasionally holds - but he doesn't expect customers to ask themselves whether the tat they're pawing through is art - or just tat. Rosler, on the other hand, hopes her buyers will be questioning "the nature of art, and the nature of the art object" as they haggle away. She wants people to decide whether they're buying art, or just designer blingwear. This will encourage them, she says, to think about shopping and "domesticity", subjects that have preoccupied her since graduating from Brooklyn College in 1965. Her sphere is broad, with major works focusing on homelessness, the Vietnam war and sweatshop workers, but the sale is the one that has caught the popular imagination ...