Haggises versus avocados

Andrew Cranston (1969 - )

oil and varnish on hardback book cover

2019

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  • About the work
    Location
    Country: UK
    City: London
    Place: Department for International Trade, Old Admiralty Building
    This still life features an unlikely pairing of haggises and avocados. The artist Andrew Cranston likens the conversation between the two shapes, ‘like fish in a pond, or some kind of creatures, with snouts smelling each other out’. 

    Andrew Cranston explains:  

    I sent an image of this painting half way through to Peter Doig in Trinidad. He in his studio, me in mine. I was remembering those avocados we had out there- so lovely tasting, as big as small rugby balls and growing in trees all around. Peter likes his haggis too, and an instagram conversation sprang up about the merits and differences of Stornoway black pudding and Trinidadian black pudding…food from cultures where traditionally - and still - waste of any animal bits is not countenanced. In the end it’s not haggis’s versus avocados but haggises and avocados. Peter suggested a wonderful breakfast of the two.

    Haggis is banned in the USA, on account of certain bits of sheep that are used. Cranston initially thought this painting might have been destined for a show in New York and thought it would be good to at least smuggle a painted one in, and on a James Joyce book cover too. For a long time Joyce also suffered at the hands of customs officials.

  • Explore
    Places
    Subjects
    still life, food & drink, avocado, haggis
    Materials & Techniques
    varnish, oil, oil painting, hardback book cover
  • Details
    Artist
    Andrew Cranston (1969 - )
    Title
    Haggises versus avocados
    Date
    2019
    Medium
    oil and varnish on hardback book cover
    Dimensions
    height: 17.0 cm; width: 21.7 cm
    Acquisition
    Purchased from Ingleby Gallery, December 2020
    Provenance
    Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, UK; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 21 December 2020
    GAC number
    18878