“YOU ALL sit around a table and somebody will buy this small packet of crisps, which ultimately is enough for one person. And yet you split the packet open onto the table like it’s a feast.” I’m speaking to ceramic artist Alma Berrow over the phone a week after the opening of her current solo exhibition at Lamb Gallery.
Renowned for ‘fake-real’ ceramic works that are at once revolting and inviting, this is Alma’s third solo show with the London-based gallery. Taking influence from folklore and celebrating acts of community through food, this body of work is a homage to her childhood and suggests a departure from the party culture – ashtrays filled with cigarettes, cocaine, and bank cards – she has so often depicted.
Alma Berrow The Opening of a Crisp Packet at Lamb Gallery
Alma Berrow The Opening of a Crisp Packet at Lamb Gallery
Aptly titled The Opening of a Crisp Packet, the name of the exhibition was inspired by the idea that, in London, people will attend anything. “You know that quote that’s like ‘oh she’d go to anything, she’d go to the opening of an envelope’? I was talking to a friend and he said, ‘oh, I’d go to the opening of a packet of crisps.’ And I found that so funny. I’m about to leave London to go back to Dorset, where I grew up, and it’s an ode to this idea of socialising here, that people will go to anything. So I thought, you know what, I’m going to invite people to the opening of a crisp packet.”
Alma Berrow The Opening of a Crisp Packet at Lamb Gallery
The Opening of a Crisp Packet spans three gallery rooms. In the first, rows of Scampi Fries adorn two walls, packets of which attendees are encouraged to pull off and eat as they make their way around the exhibition. On a plinth between walls lies Alma Berrow’s This is What You Came For 1, which is a single crisp packet, identical to those strung up, although rendered in ceramic and split open.
“The whole show is about coming together”, the artist tells me. “Especially in Dorset, there’s so much community held within a pub of people coming together and sharing stories. And so the narrative I have in my head is telling me: you come to the opening of a crisp packet, you start to share stories and catch up.”
With this communal feast in mind, the exhibition has been devised in a way that repeatedly dissolves boundaries between the art and the viewer. Scampi Fries in hand, the second room introduces the viewer to a dining table that drips in twelve kilograms of wax. Atop this – as if somebody has just stepped away – are plates of potatoes, half-eaten peaches, radishes and quail eggs.
Real candles protrude, lit, from ceramic butter packets on the table and bundles of glazed asparagus on the wall. “I want my work to be interactive. I like that it looks like candy, you want to eat it, you want to pick it up.” Indeed, Alma Berrow makes rubbish look appetising, with glossy apple cores a table centrepiece.
Alma Berrow The Opening of a Crisp Packet at Lamb Gallery
The tablescape stemmed from an interest in folklore and a year of research. She started by thinking about the allegory of the female. “I use earthenware, and so my work is ultimately Mother Gaia, Mother Earth”, she explains, as she tells me that in her research she went back to Eve, to Medusa and to Helena.
“But these are all stories about women that have been told and retold and shaped by men, and I didn’t want that.” From here, she started to look inwards, at folkloric tales from Britain and the Isles. “Growing up in Dorset, I had a childhood of pixies and magical lands, running around fields and making potions. The show itself is an amalgamation of my childhood, stories that I’ve grown up hearing, very beautiful ones about women and the importance of women.”
Alma Berrow The Opening of a Crisp Packet at Lamb Gallery
Raised Catholic, Alma wanted the final room in the show to “feel like a holy space”, somewhere for contemplation. Her Stool Sample 1 and 2 invite the viewer to take a pew, whilst Hysteria, the base of which is covered in oysters, acts as a baptismal font.
“I’ve used oysters a lot in my work”, she continues, “I’ve never liked them, and so the only reason I got into them is because I really enjoy the moment of consumption. Everyone gets an oyster, you cheers and make sure everyone eats them at the same time. To me, there’s something very religious about this act.”
As for after the exhibition? “I put so much love, care and research into this show, it felt very transformational for me. I created a lot of my previous work as a way of processing my twenties, hence the focus on late nights and debauchery. This for me felt much more gentle and feminine, and sort of like I was coming back to my childhood. It felt very scary putting this new body of work out there and being like, will people be able to follow me on this journey and understand this transformation?”
Alma Berrow The Opening of a Crisp Packet at Lamb Gallery
Halfway through producing the work for this exhibition, Alma made the decision to move back to Dorset. “It was very much a moment of realising that, for now, I’ve outgrown my London life. I’m coming back to nature.”
by Rosie Lowit
The Opening of a Crisp Packet is on at Lamb Gallery until 26 April 2025.