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Uncanny alley: grocery store made out of plastic trash debuts in Adelaide’s Rundle Mall

<span>Photograph: Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images</span>
Photograph: Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images

At a first glance, Robin Frohardt’s New York installation appears to be more of a celebration than an excoriation of the pernicious plastic bag.

From a distance, the cheerfully lit grocery store entices pedestrians in Adelaide’s Rundle Mall with a lurid cornucopia of edible produce, with its own dinky bakery, fruit and veg section, salad bar, dairy and shelves of packaged dry goods.

Related: South Australia's ban on single-use plastic cutlery and straws hailed as 'historic'

But it’s not just the incredible prices that turn out to be too good to be true. The thousands of products on display are all handcrafted from decidedly unappetising single-use plastic bags.

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The Plastic Bag Store – which premiered in Times Square in October – is the only wholly international contribution to this year’s Adelaide festival, due to ongoing Covid-19 restrictions.

Prior to its opening, Frohardt spoke to the Guardian over the phone from an Adelaide hotel room where she was enduring the mandatory 14-day quarantine.

“The idea came to me many years ago, just watching someone bag and double bag my groceries which then went in another bag,” she says.

“I realised how absurd it was. And so I decided that I would make a grocery store that was even more absurd.”

The Plastic Bag Store, an Adelaide festival installation by New York artist Robin Frohardt.
The Plastic Bag Store, an Adelaide festival installation by New York artist Robin Frohardt. Photograph: Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images
Packaged chicken drumsticks and sausages made out of plastic on display at The Plastic Bag Store in Adelaide’s Rundle Mall.
Some of the art ion display at The Plastic Bag Store in Adelaide’s Rundle Mall.
Photograph: Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images

The artist insists only the finest, locally sourced single-use plastic – freshly harvested from the streets and bins of New York City – was used for her project, which took several years in the making. Its creator may be something of an eco-warrior, but not without a wry sense of humour.

Frohardt concedes the exhibition has evolved somewhat and taken on a local twang since it opened amid the shuttered stores and eerily quiet sidewalks of Manhattan.

In the spirit of Australia’s truth in labelling consumer laws, the rebranding of familiar products, some custom made for an Australian audience, reflect the contents; Vegemite to Bagemite, Nestle’s Milo to Nastly Baglo and so on.

The New York premiere coincided with the city’s introduction of a ban on single-use plastic bags (with some exceptions) – a ban that was delayed eight months due to Covid-19, which has so far claimed the lives of more than 28,000 of its residents.

The New York Times described it as “an emphatic work of activism that is also a wistful work of art”.

The exterior of The Plastic Bag Store in New York City’s Times Square in October 2020.
The exterior of The Plastic Bag Store in New York City’s Times Square in October 2020. Photograph: Erik Pendzich/REX/Shutterstock

The Adelaide opening also coincides with a local eco-milestone. On 1 March, South Australia will become the first state in Australia to outlaw a range of single-use plastics, including plastic straws and cutlery and polystyrene cups, bowls and plates.

The ban goes further than New York’s, where single-use plastic packaging is still permitted for takeaway food, uncooked meat, dry cleaning and garbage.

Frohardt says the timing of her exhibition with the South Australian ban coming into force this week was fortuitous but coincidental. And she hopes Australians will embrace the show in the spirit it was intended: thought-provoking, a bit of a tease, free of preachy didacticism.

A delicious-looking cake crafted from single-use plastic bags in The Plastic Bag Store, an Adelaide Festival installation by US artist Robin Frohardt.
A delicious-looking cake crafted from single-use plastic bags.
Photograph: Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images

“It’s definitely not about trying to shame people about their own plastic use, because I don’t think that’s necessarily productive,” she says.

“We’re all part of a system that’s designed for our convenience, it’s really ingrained in our lives.

“My hope is for people to get more of a context about the permanence of the disposable – we use plastic for seconds, but it has a life of thousands of years.”

The shelf life of the exhibition itself is a question Frohadt dismisses with cheerful acerbity.

“Hopefully, we’ll have it around for a long time, and then perhaps some [pieces] will be sold as art objects,” she says.

“It definitely won’t go into the trash.

“Even though that’s where it came from.”