Shop Dropping Montreal is a collective of designers who take part in the nouveau practise of Shop Dropping. What’s Shop Dropping you ask? It’s best described by the group’s mission statement: “The dissemination of art through institutions such as galleries and museums most often only reaches an elite group of viewers. This simple fact conjures a desire to reconnect with the general public. Shopdropping is one of the many ways this is made possible. Leaving images in an unlikely place, such as the grocery store, creates a surprise encounter with art and design in a public space. Art is not only reserved for the informed, but also for the general public. A dialogue between the two worlds is what we hope to further achieve by presenting Shopdropping Montreal at the 2009 Montreal Biennial.”
“Shopdropping becomes a form of curating at the grass-roots level, by stimulating consumer interaction with some of the most archetypal commodities found in a communal environment – the grocery store. Labeling and advertising dominate our daily lives, as well as the mundane necessity to purchase goods in order to survive. Aestheticizing a single can amongst a sea of bland labels awakes our visual senses which have been numbed by pre-meditated tasks and adverts which consume us daily. Shopdropping aims to create a mental break from the daily overload of information we receive, becoming a means to reclaim not only visual language, but also visual space.”
“While reclaiming visual space through the act of shopdropping, issues of surveillance also come into question. Because Shopdropping involves publicly ‘dropping’ images and documenting them on the spot, shopdroppers are constantly being watched by security cameras. The act of shopdropping makes us aware of the environments in which we inhabit our daily routines. These environments have become systems for surveillance which not only monitor our behaviour, but incur the obligation to conform to social norms in order to ensure control. This is most often noted when someone comes across shopdrop material – they are either surprised and excited by the effects of this random piece of art or angered by its misplacement and confused by its intentions. Shopdropping continuously invites public reaction and in so doing, the medium succeeds in being the message.”
