In
the context of his retrospective at the Slought Foundation, Fred
Forest conducted a performance and devised an installation. He
brought an authentic Marcel Duchamp to the supermarket, pushing
it
about in a shopping trolley while browsing the aisles. The work
(preparatory sketch for "The bride stripped bare by her bachelors")
was then deadlocked in a safe and seals applied on its doors to
ensure
the work inside remained sacrosant and pure. A certificate was then
drawn up attesting to the presence of the Duchamp in the safe; it
was
notorized by a Justice of the Peace and then displayed on the safe's
door. In other words, the artist exhibits and reveals a safe
containing a Marcel Duchamp, a work, as a result, that the public
is
unable to see! This situation-comedy parodies the way in which works
of art go from being valued for pleasure to being valued for money,
thus illustrating a fundamentally abhorrent and alienating feature
of
today's society.