Tate Britain's Purchase of a Supermarket Receipt Riles Critics

Ceal Floyer, a Pakistani-born artist, is attracting ridicule from the British tabloid press over the Tate Britain’s display of her cash register receipt, which identifies £70.32 worth of white products, purchased at a supermarket, that the artist envisions as a monochromatic still life. The things about the conceptual work that hackle critics most are: the Tate paid £30,000 to acquire it; the curator of the exhibition actually purchased the goods, because the artist lives in Berlin; and after the current exhibition, which is now at the Tate, it gets discarded, because a new receipt must be used every time it is shown. As David Lee, editor of art newsletter The Jackdaw, sees it, “The Tate has bought an incredibly limited piece of work here which has no stamina as a work of art.”