Never let the truth get in the way of a good story...

Part One of the 'Who, What, Where and Why' of The Ice Cream Stories.

British urban legend has it that Margaret Thatcher invented Mr Whippy *

I had been researching Mr Whippy for my art practice for several years when I came across this story. It felt like the final piece in the puzzle I had been searching for. I was exploring ideas of class and the politics of nostalgia so the thought of the former leader of the Conservative party being responsible for making soft serve ice cream was too good to be true…

When it turned out not to be true it was even better.

This story was so widely believed that in her eulogy in 2013 the then Bishop of London credited her with its invention, and that same week The Washington Post also got in on the story with the line "it’s one aspect of Margaret Thatcher's legacy we can all feel unequivocally good about".

Probably closest to the truth is a 1983 article in New Scientist stating that she was "developing emulsifiers for ice-creams”.

While giving soft serve its unique mouth-feel Maggie’s emulsifiers would have made the ice cream more profitable and lowered quality. It was a metaphor made in heaven.

And so The Ice Cream Stories were born.

I’ve been preoccupied with memories and the magical contamination of objects for decades. The stories we tell about ourselves, about each other, and our relationship to an objective truth and how that is distilled and projected onto inanimate objects. So I started asking visitors to the studio to share a story with me in exchange for an ice cream, often prompted by a random selection of white objects .

Last month we collected over 400 stories in exchange for ice cream at SPRING/BREAK Art Show New York.

Part Two of the What, When, Where, and Why of The Ice Cream Stories coming soon.

Keep an eye out for a special selection of Dad related Ice Cream Stories celebrating Fathers Day this Sunday!

*that’s Mr Softee or Soft Serve to the Americans among us.