Picture the scene: it’s 2am at a raucous dinner party with your wildest friends. Everyone is still seated, leaning back on their chairs, gossiping and smoking like chimneys. The table is strewn with plates of oyster shells, half-eaten octopus legs and discarded caviar spoons. Mid conversation, the guests theatrically stub out their cigarettes on the plates of food or scallop shell ashtrays. Imagine that scene, imagine that colossal dinner party detritus, but imagine it as art. That’s what Alma Berrow has captured, with her quirky ceramic ashtrays filled with glittering, gold-butted cigarettes.
Beloved by everyone from Tish Weinstock, to Lady Clara Paget and Jazzy De Lisser, Alma’s ceramic cigarettes are now on show (until 28th October) at the Lamb Gallery in Mayfair. The exhibition, entitled Echo, immortalises scenes of excess: ceramic bundles of £50 notes, scallop shells packed full with chunky cigarettes and ashtrays littered with discarded tea bags and blackened match sticks. The artworks are hilarious pastiches on everyday objects: they’re glossy, oversized and hyperbolic. Like Sarah Lucas, Alma takes a vulgar idea - a mouldy mug - and creates something beautiful. ‘It’s a blend of hyperreality and cartoon,’ Alma - elegant in black Marcia trousers - tells Tatler. ‘There’s a certain scrumminess to them. They look like candy.’