STRAND NEWS

Strand news is on the Strand. I go in there almost every weekday to buy a peanut butter kitkat chunky or a can of full fat coke. The man behind the till has sold me three oyster cards already this year because I keep losing them. He thinks this is the funniest thing.

I like going to Strand News more than I like going to the Tesco express over the road. Tesco has got a very standard selection of meal deal items. I imagine tesco is the same across the city, across the country. Kinder bueno, kitkat, kitkat chunky, aero, twix. Tesco has been standardised, it pitches to the middle of the road and the lowest common denominator. Strand News is everywhere and it is nowhere. It has not been standardised just yet. It is a kind of chaos entity. I don’t actually call it Strand News, I call it The Shop. All newsagents are The Shops. I say I’m going The Shop, dyou want anything? They have dark chocolate kitkats and peanut butter kitkat chunky. They’ve got Turkish sesame snack bars. Lays Masala Magic. Cherry Coke. Purple Takis. Lemon drizzle flavoured elf bars. They sell umbrellas, soleros, postcards, mogu mogu and tshirts that say I <3 LONDON. Little gold statuettes of big ben. Different sized envelopes. They say they do passport photos. It is nice to have a chaotically wide range of international snacks to choose from.

Last month Strand News hosted an exhibition. A group show: Athen Kardashian and Nina Mhach Durban, Eden Chau-Morrow, Marcus Jefferson and Xooset, all curated by Tom Mouna. So I walked in to get a peanut butter kitkat chunky, went past the drinks fridge and the crisps all the way to the back room. I couldn’t really tell what was art and what was shop stock. I couldn’t really tell whose work was whose. There was no press release, no works list, no information beyond a flyer that was actually just a reel posted on instagram. Footage from the inside of a different newsagent, colours fried all the way to the max and blue text swirling: LOTTERY OYSTER OFF LICENCE. The caption said THERE’S A LOT OF ART IN THE CITY BUT NOT MUCH OF IT FEELS LIKE ITS FROM THE CITY.

Four cardboard tissue boxes stacked in a neat square, cutout holes in the shape of hearts and a banner across the top saying ESPECIALLY FOR YOU. Greetings cards on a spinning rack, cleared out so only the romantic ones with hearts on are left (the grey bear with a baby blue nose that says BE MINE). A gold plastic princess tiara. A sticker of a red flower with a plastic yellow face, saying MERRY CHRISTMAS. Three casette tapes (Selena, Elvis, the FAME soundtrack) and a stack of blue plastic bangles. A multipack of locker padlocks with a post-it note that says MILK (3). A blue pin board with a glass lid sits on a plastic pack of Highland Spring water bottles, pinned inside there’s a zebra print plastic bag and a poster of Konnie Huq wearing a tshirt that says OFFLICENCE. Holographic giftbags in silver, gold, red, green, pink and blue. A sunbleached framed picture of Elvis (signed). An A3 picture of Rekha backed on cardboard and smothered by a layer of clear sellotape all crisscrossed together into a woven mass like stickyback plastic. Rekha gestures at her tikka and makes meaningful eye contact, a yellow sticker says 50p. For some reason there’s a pole in the middle of the back room, a long green yellow red knitted sock dangles from the fire alarm. Tropical flip flops. 2pack of magnetic learner plates and a post it that reads MILK (2). A pile of onions have been individually clingfilm wrapped and stacked into a triangle on the magazine rack top shelf. It goes: Vogue, Tatler, Dazed, Bazaar, ONIONS. Victoria’s Secret bag, picture of a hot pink Juicy Couture tracksuit on a mannequin, Disney Channel era Miley Cyrus with the balayage and beachy waves, Bratz dolls Top Trumps. Multipack of Lays Tomato in a brown cardboard box from the cash and carry. Andrex, kleenex XL, Bahlsen Butter Leaves Shortcake Thins, post it says MUCH LOVE I LEAVE BEHIND. Three bottles of hot pink LONDON GIRL nail polish. Shabana Azmi, Charli XCX, Princess Diana. A glossy silver A4 ringbinder is propped open and the clippy rings thread through a bunch of plastic key fob labels. They have fancy black joined up handwriting that reads: Lord / silently, I will look / I love / also loves me too… And as I walk past, the floorboards shift and they clatter gently against each other, propped up on a plastic wrapped crate of RIO cans. Lots of foiled heart shaped nail stickers in blue, pink, yellow and red arranged into the shape of an OM sign. Internet cafe booth with a laminated sign ONLINE INDIAN APPLICATION and a chunky square Dell screen and wide keyboard. On the Dell screen there’s a two minute video playing and it’s a cgi render of a 00s style figure walking through a messy urban sprawl.

I am in the back room of Strand News, under the fluorescent lights and suspended ceiling, my arms flung open in a shrug. What is the city? London, capital and heart of a dead empire, so impossible and untrue. Only Zones 3 & 4 are real, the rest is a cardboard cowboy town. Like, as soon as you push past the saloon doors, you realise it’s just a painted facade, I’m sure the Gherkin is a collective fever dream, Canary Wharf should be an oxbow lake by now but they filled the Isle of Dogs up with concrete so it wouldn’t sink into the Thames. The Strand used to be full of traffic and now the boulevard is tarmacked and painted rainbow colours. I’m screaming at the suspended ceiling, WHAT IS A CITY??? Where do cities come from, what goes into them and what comes out?

It’s just stuff, isn’t it? Crisp packets, flyers, wrappers, water bottles, glass bottles, cans, cardboard flattened and stacked in bin bags. Cities produce so much stuff, endless amounts of crap, and it all just enters the world and exists. It goes on changing and mutating and existing. My grandad came here from a corner of the Empire, he was a bus conductor and then he had a shop just off Goldhawk Road, somewhere near Ravenscourt Park and Shepherd’s Bush Market. The shop is now a block of flats. Life and the city and stuff never stops! It is churned out almost continuously — whatever it is. Stuff and bits and crap and things, signs of life — it’s all everywhere and it never fucking stops, and I think that’s a good thing. Imagine a kind of art that is made like that. Continuous, no edges, always moving and shifting and churning itself inside out inside out inside out like a rotating sphincter, like a Doner kebab.

None of the works in the back room of Strand News have been made from scratch, like none of this has literally been made. Maybe the video on the chunky internet cafe Dell screen, but even then. All these artists are producing work by pulling things out of an existing register. They’re taking stuff that exists in and around the city, that speaks about life in the city. They are picking it up at a mid-point in its urban evolutionary lifecycle, and they are using this stuff like a sock puppet, making it speak. It doesn’t make sense, it’s not coherent and it’s not language but — ah! Its voice — it sounds like me! (And you, and YOU!) The long sock on the fire alarm, post it note MILK (1, 2, 3, 4 etc), Konnie Huq, greetings cards, cgi render of a player walking like he’s scrolling through an alleyway, tunnel walls lined with tags like cartoon bubble writing, red, yellow, green, orange, pink, silver, gold. Peanut butter kit kat chunky, mogu mogu, oyster card, solero, passport photo, lottery numbers, I <3 LONDON. This city is infinite scroll, rapid thoughtless movement. I think it’s a good thing.