In 1971, a pair of works was shown at an exhibition in Düsseldorf. Each consisted of three cartons of processed cheese, held between sheets of glass on which were painted slices of white bread. The assemblages were housed, conventionally enough, in wooden frames, with the unusual addition of a metal carrying handle on top. The names of the works were stencilled on their backing-boards: the first Air Chest Pong Wad, the second Rice Tash Pong Wad.
If the ostensible purpose of a title is to explain, then these did just the opposite. They were intentionally cryptic, being the surnames of the two men who had made the works anagrammatised with the word “sandwich”. The first artist was Dieter Roth (or, occasionally, Rot), who would be famous by the time of his death in 1998. The second was Robin Page, who has died of lung cancer, widely forgotten, at the age of 82.
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