Self Service
SELF SERVICE
Composition: Blue, Blue, Red
2025
These works are made from newspapers shaped into trays, dating from the 1950s to the 1990s. Each tray carries drawings of dishes and objects once used in Fortes Ice Cream Parlour — a family-run café that opened in Clevedon, North Somerset in 1952, and was later continued as an ice-cream kiosk run by the artist’s uncle, Aldo Vella.
The newspapers used to form the trays were collected from Aldo’s daily visits to the local Sainsbury’s. These everyday papers — saved, handled, and repurposed — become the base material of the work.
The trays are quietly rearranged over time, not by viewers, but as a gesture to the unseen rhythm of past customers — their habits, their orders, their presence now folded into memory. This subtle shifting recalls the movement of the old self-service counter, where teas, coffees, sundaes, and knickerbocker glories were once served.
Drawings on each tray are made using carbon paper, a material once used to write receipts by hand. The objects depicted are traced from items in the family archive, displayed on the wall opposite.
The red and blue colours echo the mosaic pillar in the space and reference the language of modernist abstraction, connecting the textures of everyday labour to broader visual histories.
Self Service reflects on memory, care, and quiet ritual — on how family, work, and place leave traces, and how the past can continue to shift gently within the present.