Erica van Zon, Why am I always here?
Opens 5–7pm, Thursday 2 October.
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 child in tow and a mind divided by the demands of daily life, the aisles become places of repetition, inspiration and obsession.
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. Often, 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 an exercise in translation, adding the recognisable van Zon touch.
Through this new body of work, van Zon invites us into these spaces of intimacy, at times 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.
For Erica van Zon’s ‘Why am I Always Here?’
Michelle Duff
The first time I met myself it was in the baked goods aisle. Not actual baked goods, you understand, but the ingredients you need to make them. Dry goods. I was squatting down by where I’d last seen the pinenuts when I accidentally ran into my hip with the trolley, sending myself sprawling.
“Do you mind?” I said.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” I said.
I pulled myself up, and I dusted myself off. We looked at each other. I was wearing gym gear, and I was wearing some clothes I’d picked up off the floor and shoved on quickly in order to appear presentable to drive my kid to school.
“Skinny jeans?” I said.
“Lululemon?” I said.
“They’re not technically skinny,” I said. “I’d say they’re more boyfriend, and the bottoms are ripped. They don’t cling around the calves like a true skinny.”
“You know as well as I do our friend bought us these leggings,” I said. “I realise the guy who makes them is a fatphobe or whatever and it’s a problem. Don’t you love the way they hug our butt, though?”
I did. It was true. I looked cute AF, even though my winged eyeliner was a bit uneven on one side and my hair could have done with some more product. I looked in my trolley, and there were a few more processed items than I would have liked, given that I was raising children and responsible for their every nutritional and emotional need. No child can run on chicken nuggets alone, even if they’re the fancy tempura-battered kind and most likely made from actual chicken.
“Don’t be fooled by that ice-cream,” I said. “It looks like ice-cream, but it’s technically frozen dessert. The container is the same but there’s no cream in it.”
“Those ‘everything’ bagels are disgusting,” I replied. “Your kids won’t eat them. They’ve got garlic and salt in them, not just sesame seeds.”
We had to go.
“Are you sure it wasn’t just a mirror?” my husband said, when I told him later that night. I was cleaning out the refrigerator, throwing rotten fruit into the bin. A slimy leek. Inexplicably frozen carrots. Apples with rounds of rancid mush.
“No, it was definitely me,” I said. “I can’t explain it either. I didn’t even know I was there, and then there I was.”
“Did you seem dangerous?”
“No. Just kind of distracted,” I said, reading a group message on a chat for my son’s soccer team while shoving a casserole in the oven and flicking on the jug. I started smashing the garlic; dammit, I’d forgotten the bread, and what about the friends we had coming for dinner on Friday? I could stop by the ‘supe after athletics and before the parent-teacher conversations, then marinade the steak. I did have that project due but if I stayed up till 2am and woke at 5 I could easily make the deadline.
My husband looked annoyed.
‘What?”
“I said, were you even listening to me?”
I sidled up to myself in the fruit section, where I was squeezing oranges. A friend once saw the actor Karl Urban doing the same at New World Victoria Park, while wearing a shirt with most of its buttons undone, his hairy chest in full view.
That supermarket is a smouldering ruin now, which makes sense.
I’m in Kilbirnie PAK'nSAVE in a hoodie so I’m not sure I’m giving quite the same juicy vibe. I’m unsure of the rules around squeezing fruit in general, apart from avocados obviously which you absolutely cannot afford to take a gamble on. But also, are they a fruit?
“Hola,” I said.
I got a fright, dropping my orange. I looked around and no-one was looking, so I kicked it under the fruit stand.
“Who even are you?” I whispered.
“I could ask the same of you,” I said.
I didn’t have a trolley, but I was holding a bunch of bananas in front of me like a shield, or a beacon. The tips were all pointing upwards.
“How’s life out there, anyway?” I said.
“Great,” I said. “How’s life in here?”
“Better than ever,” I said. A zip-lock bag of pick’n’mix lollies stuck out of one pocket, and I was chewing overtly. I was wearing slippers, and several sunhats stacked atop of one another, and a necklace that upon closer inspection had been fashioned out of personal hygiene products.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” I said, but the other me wasn’t paying attention; an apron-clad butcher was strutting past, cutting a glance at my bananas. He continued clomping past the meats, an industrial steed, an exuder of Big Supermarket Energy, pausing only to hold open one side of the plastic curtains, expectantly.
I slipped through.
‘That’s how they fuck you,” I yelled, at my receding back. It seemed I was past being reasoned with.
Former Tauranga MP Sam Uffindell once said he sometimes did the supermarket shopping to give his wife a break.
Ha, hahaha.
The last time I saw myself at the supermarket I gave myself a wide berth. I had picked up everything I needed to in record time, and was looking forward to pointlessly browsing affordable beauty products for five to ten minutes.
But it was hard to relax.
There I was, everywhere I looked; hopping along in the centre aisle, one leg stuffed into a pair of stockings; twisting the top off a series of deodorants and sticking my nose in for a sniff; piercing the gladwrap around a container of mince with a shiny fingernail; ripping open a packet of corn chips with a kind of reckless abandon. I put my palms over the eyes of a passing child. Was nothing sacred?
When I last saw myself, I was lounging atop a haphazard pyramid of egg cartons, slathering the yolks across my naked body.
I shook my head. I was shameless. I’d be back.
