Most of us use shopping carts as mobile storage units while we are perusing for goods at a store or supermarket, but designer Matt McVeigh finds more artistic use for the metallic wagons. The Australian artist creates a variety of miniature sculptures that replicate a series of swirling shopping carts, in addition to his life-size installations, representing the consumerism-driven vehicle in an unusual way.
In the pieces The New Covenant and Covenant Under Question?, we see two shopping carts placed across each other, connected by an arch extending from within one cart into the other. Each piece, which was part of last month's 8th annual Sculpture by the Sea exhibit in Cottesloe (both indoor and outdoor), criticizes consumerism.
Similarly, McVeigh's miniature piece titled Trolling#1 symbolizes the never-ending capitalistic cycle of greedily wanting more. The sculptor's series of works that utilize these caged carts revolve around the observation of the world's reliance on material goods. He sites the portmanteau affluenza, which is commonly used by critics of consumerism comprising of the words affluence and influenza, as a driving force in his shopping cart sculptural endeavors.
