Erica van Zon, Why am I always here?

As a mother to a young child, the supermarket is never a straightforward errand. One minute you’re handing over suspicious slices of luncheon meat, the next you’re crouching to gather raisins scattered behind the trolley — anything to keep those restless fingers busy until the checkout.

For Erica van Zon, these moments are more than chores. With her own slightly older child in tow and a mind divided by the demands of daily life, the aisles become places of repetition, inspiration, and persistent obsessions.

Supermarkets are where Van Zon so often finds herself. Never static, each visit offers something new to catch her eye, a detail to notice, a discovery to make. She delights in being there, whether in Kilbirnie or abroad, where a supermarket trip becomes a destination in itself.

In Why am I Always Here? these encounters are translated into embroidery, beading, and hand-made objects that are at once playful and deadpan, devotional and absurd. Wit runs through the exhibition, from cracked eggs in aisle 14, to a landscape of pick’n’mix lollies—as well as a wry nod to the outrageous cost of butter! Van Zon is not interested in the sheer volume of goods, but in their variety, their familiarity, and their aesthetic appeal. Each work is deliberately altered in translation, adding the recogniseable van Zon touch.

Through this new body of work, Van Zon invites us into these spaces of absurd intimacy, always mundane yet somehow charged, where the question is asked half in exasperation, half in wonder: Why am I always here?

A piece of writing by Michelle Duff accompanies the exhibition.