POP!Empty Carriers, 2002Tesco ‘bag for Life’ supermarket plastic car-rier-bag with art print is re-made back into ‘real’ art again: A handy carrier bag sculpture painting.

I have always been collecting each edition of Tesco’s Bags for Life and now have a large box full of bags ready to be made into new Empty Carrier works.

There is something very special about Billy Piper and she seams close to the hearts of all of the British public. The people have been following her life in the media since she was just 15 when she started out as a pop star. She has done so well and everyone seams so proud of her. If only she was our Princess.

Billie, 2007Portrait/ alreadymades. Magasine front cover and antique gold frame.

detkoldenord.jpg , 2008Modern Fresco: digital print and plasterboard in a wood and aluminium foil vitrine display.

Mönet, 2000Image reclaimed from a Tesco ‘Bag for Life’ advertising the the 2000 Monet exhibition at The Royal Academy in London. I felt like I wanted to salvage and try to save the Monet that had been reduced to plastic printed advertising in a supermarket. So I carefully restored it to a painting and a work of art again.

Above - Royal Academy poster for the Monet exhi-bition appropriated

Above right - Anyone can be an artist! IKEA instruction sheet for how Anyone can make a Monet from a Tesco’s Bag for Life.

Lethe Wharf, 2004New Media / digital print on glass. Research and proposal of a public artwork at Canada Square outside Canary Wharf Station in London.

Reduced69pDigital print on boardA Tesco’s reduced to clear / close to sell by date sticker enlarged.Here exhibited on the outside wall of Ashley Gardens Gallery op-posite a Tesco Metro in Bethnel Green in London, 2002.

visual philosophy / conceptual aesteticsThis small piece of product packaging is also visual philosophy to me. While the FREE promises something for nothing, the ** implies that conditions are attached. FREEDOM is a fundamental human value but, when in search of it, is frustratingly illusive and actually possible. In a paradoxical sense, FREE** captures an essence of the modern human condition.

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FREE**Pop-poetry

Digital print, idea for a large scale sculpture and/or a T-shirt design

freestanding ‘Donald Judd’ style plywood letters. The front of each letter is roughly textured

in red coloured cement/plaster.

Janis Joplin

‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose’

‘... the rich smell of aviation fuel fills my nostrils /the petro’eau de toilette scent fills me with deja vu - a melancholy feeling, a lost romance, as if this airplane’s perfume reminded me of a long lost lover. As I take my seat, I think of the time that I sat here once before, having fallen in love that evening I had found myself having to write a letter – for I just couldn’t bear the idea that our plane might go down in middle of the north sea and she would never know how I was feeling – a letter to tell her that I was

thinking of her when the noises started, that I was focused on her face through the banging and the shriek of tearing metal as the fuselage was breaking up, and that I imagined falling asleep next to her again as our bodies were sucked out of the disintegrating wreak and before my eyes became heavy, and my brain began to feel feint - the consciousness dizzily swirling its way out of me like the last vortex of water guzzling out of the bottom of the bath.’ extracts from a text. Tommy, 2003

Fuel leak electrical fault disaster, 2005Digital print collage sculpture.

‘Celebrity and Shock is today’s Tragedy and Comedy’The mass media is the new Theatre of Dionysus

Modern Frescos: digital print on plasterboardamateur_video_767_hijack.jpg (opposite)pepsi_britney.jpgdavid_beckham.jpgjessica_and_holly_found_murdered.jpgsarah_payne-_abduction_and_murder.jpgroy_whiting_42-_found_guilty.jpgnetto.jpg (next page)

In the renaissance, a fresco would be created by the artist; he would paint directly onto wet plaster on a church wall or other building. Tommy degrades this fine art practice, reducing the wet plaster to basic builders plasterboard as universally used in the constric-tion of all buildings today. The imagery too shows no sign of the artist’s hand. Instead, digital images decorate the surface of the plasterboard. The renaissance painter’s depic-tions from the bible have been replaced with images of disaster, tragedy and celebrity taken directly from the mass media.

The title, Singularity, is taken from theoretical physics and mathematics. A singularity is the point where physical laws of the universe or mathematical theory break down. The Big Bang and black holes are examples of singularities in our universe, and in mathematics; singularities are 0 (zero) and ∞ (infinity). In this exhibition the idea of the singularity is applied to popular culture. Could tragedy and celebrity be considered the singularities (the 0 & ∞ ) of today’s human reality experience? the mass media supplies the demand. [text from Singularity Exhibition about the Modern Fresco works ]

concorde.jpg, 2002. Slide projection with white-noise from an un-tuned radio

Some images just strike a chord in me and I have to save them - I cut them out and collect them. They feel important and iconic and reflect our times so deeply that they should be art and not thrown out for paper recycling.

In this work I scanned the image into a computer and had it made up as a slide. Then I experimented with it in a slide projector. By un-focusing the image almost to the point of un-recognition, I dis-covered, clear and in focus, a mass off old dust and debris within the machine, there projected up on the wall. This seamed to per-fectly represent the unseen debris on the runway that penetrated the fuel tanks and causing the crash.

Degree Show

at Central Saint M

artins, 2002

The Tesco ShowResearch and work in development towards an art installation adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Tesco’s for me is a place of thinking and contemplation. Many of my ideas and much of my philoso-phy has come from wandering the isles of Tesco’s in Surrey Quays Shopping Centre. One day I will collect all my Tesco works together in one big Tesco Show. Helium shopping bags will float around the space and cups of tea will be offered to all the visitors.

Deg

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2002

Britney Calendar, 2007Portrait/alreadymades.

Calender and gaffatape

Suzanne used to buy me a Britney Spears

calendar each year for my birthday. I decided

to re-personalise this image/object, and is now upgraded to an

artwork.I can’t really explain what she does to me

but I can feel her presence deep inside and I will always have

a special place in my heart for her.

David Backham‘The problem is that when you

want somethingso badly, it can start to get on top of you’

Food for Thought Tommy’s Gammel Dansk smørrebrød + blødkogte æg w/ kaffe + juice

A coffee break art event at the Symposium 2002 @Central Saint Martins College

www.tommyart.org info@tommyart.orgTommy Art, a.k.a. Thomas Blach Locker, Wilstersgade 36 st.tv. ,8000 Aarhus C. Denmark

© This B

ooklet including all Artw

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my A

rt. B

ooklet designed and produced by Tomm

y 2008.