Delicious or revolting? The strange taste of chocolate art

Artist Anya Gallaccio is honest about her newest artwork.

There’s not much to see in this empty shop on Paisley High Street, but close your eyes and you’ll smell and sense something special.

“What you can smell is intensely concentrated chocolate paint which has been layered onto all four walls,” she explains.

“To some people it will be delicious and to some people it will be revolting.”

“A lot will depend on your relationship with chocolate. It’s definitely not a Willy Wonka type of chocolate room.”

The work is the latest touring exhibit from Jupiter Art Land, a sculpture park on the outskirts of Edinburgh. Their nation wide art learning programme Jupiter+ previously took an artwork by Rachel MacLean onto the high streets of Perth and Ayr.

Anya Gallaccio has a permanent work at Jupiter, a crystal grotto which was installed in 2012. Two years later, she created a temporary version of her chocolate painted room for the park.

“It was an enormous hit when we first showed it,” says Nicky Wilson, founder and director of Jupiter Art Land.

“All you could see was little hand and fingerprints where toddlers had tried to take off the chocolate.”

Although the work is entitled “stroke”, the amount of touching varies from place to place.

“In Vienna it was intense, it was covered in fingermarks,” says Anya

“In Japan, where I expected people to be more reserved, they licked the walls. In London it was more furtive, with people in the corners picking at it, and in some places they carved their initials, it was discreet.”

She’s not sure what to expect from the people of Paisley, despite it being the place of her birth.

“I was born in the hospital here so to be fair I probably wasn’t in Paisley long,” she says.

“But I lived in Glasgow till I was five and then my dad got a job in London. I’m Scottish, I think of myself as Scottish and European and this is a really great way to start a new season.”

It’s an important new season for Anya. Next week, Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate will stage a major retrospective of her work.

It comes 21 years since she was nominated for the Turner Prize and is timed to coincide with her Paisley homecoming.

She’ll also begin work on an AIDS memorial in London, for which she won a commission this summer.

“Another project dear to my heart,” she says.

“They all have an educational aspect and I hope it holds space for all of these questions around consumerism, the environment and the landscape. I’m excited to have this suite of projects running together.”

Across the High Street from the installation is another empty shop which will accommodate an education studio for the thousands of young people expected to visit over the next three and a half months.

Jenny from Orkney, and Luke from Paisley are recent graduates of Glasgow school of Art, who will assist with the education programme.

“It’s the sort of thing which doesn’t often come to Paisley,” says Luke.

“Glasgow and Edinburgh, maybe but to have it here, and doing outreach work into schools is special.”

“It may open people’s eyes to different types of art, show new ways of making it and challenge perceptions of what art is and what it can do.”

Jenny said she knew Anya’s work from youth collective Jupiter+ Orbit but was still taken aback by the Paisley installation.

“The first time I came in, it was the smell,” she says.

“You really get hit from outside. Maybe I won’t like chocolate by the end but it will be interesting to see people’s reactions.”

Stroke is partly funded by Future Paisley, a cultural regeneration partnership programme led by Renfrewshire Council. Their chair, Councillor Lisa Marie Hughes, says whatever the public reaction, the work will have benefits for Paisley.

“A free work by a Turner nominated artist is an economic generator,” she says.

“It will bring people here who will support our local businesses but it’s also an open art experience. We all have opinions about art, we like things or we don’t like things, but we can come and think about it, maybe consider visiting again.

“Paisley is a radical town. We like things that are new and interesting. We’re opinionated people and we like to talk to other people about it.”

As for the artwork - it's designed to oxidise over time and slowly decay.

When the show is over on 31 December, the shop will become a café where the only chocolate will be served on mugs or plates and not on the walls.

Anya Gallaccio’s Stroke is at 18 High Street, Paisley from 7 September to 31 December.