Breaking Bread

Breaking Bread, Peterborough, 2016.

This project was commissioned by Metal Peterborough (and further supported with ACE funding) for a work coinciding with Studio Orta’s 70x7:The Meal - a harvest celebration for five hundred strangers which took place in the historic Cathedral Square in Peterborough.

I made one hundred and twenty five loaves of ceremonial bread which were shared between the five hundred diners. Each loaf contained an envelope of provocations to encourage conversation between strangers.

Four loaves contained solid gold ‘relics’, based on archaeological findings of a food market from 1150 discovered on the same site as the meal. These treasures were kept by the finders.

Twelve months later, I visited each of the finders in their homes to talk about the object they had uncovered. Each had found a different resonance in their discovery and related it respectively to a birth, death, marriage and divorce.

There is one remaining loaf of bread.

Inside are buried four replicas of the replicas of the relics.

This loaf will never be opened but comes with x-rays as proof of contents.