Former workers from Peek Freans biscuit factory gathered at a Bermondsey art gallery last week to do their bit for the international state of emergency which, the gallery believes, currently grips the earth like a pensioner holding a bourbon.

Four hundred volunteers have already taken part in the operation SOS: OK (SAVE OUR SOULS: ZERO KILLINGS), billed as London’s largest ever simulation of an emergency food relief programme.

The gallery is distributing food aid in the form of nutritional biscuits cooked to a specially designated recipe, to visitors to the gallery, and on the streets of Bermondsey.
The exercise is partly a reference to a relief operation of 1870 during the Franco-Prussian war. When the Prussians lifted their siege of Paris, Peek Freans supplied thousands of biscuits to the starving citizens.

Earlier this summer, artist Paula Roush organised a ‘Memory Factory’, gathering archive material and calling on former Peek Freans workers to come and contribute their memories of Biscuit Town.

Her new exhibition is also a response to the hunger crisis in parts of the world, which she believes comprises the real international emergency. “Terrorism may be one reason but that might not be the main reason. Actually the hunger threat is much more serious. Our attention is being diverted into something else.”

Crates of biscuits are being distributed by horse and cart on Tower Bridge Road and on the Blue, and the exhibition will run Friday to Sunday, from 8-30 October, and by appointment at the Coleman Project Space, on Webster Road.