Bobby Baker artwork

The New Art Gallery Walsall

Bobby Baker was commissioned to make this work by the New Art Gallery, Walsall, prior to the launch of the gallery. Baker chose to celebrate the ‘ingredients’ of the new institution by rendering the gallery’s staff as a  single ginger biscuit, modelled in the shape of a group photo. The biscuit was presented in a commemorative box that included a copy of the original photo and a list of the 19 employees and their roles. These boxes were given out across Walsall. The work’s title is taken from a Sufi proverb that Baker has used previously, to make absurd and humorous conclusions.

“to bring a sheep to consciousness…” was commissioned as part of To Be Continued; a series of artworks and interventions across Walsall in the lead up to the opening of the new gallery in 2000. A publication of the same name, edited by Deborah Smith and Kate Fowle, featured the commissions alongside contextual essays by leading critics. These examine whether temporary interventions into the activities of a small town could create a meaningful dialogue with the people that live and work there.