In recent years, a team of researchers in England discovered a carefully buried Iron Age chicken skeleton, completely intact with no evidence of butchering. It is believed that Iron Age Britons did not eat chickens. Instead, they treated them as exotic and wonderous creatures, worshipping them as deities.

‘The Bachelor’s Handbag,’ ‘Tradie’s Briefcase’ or ‘Chicken Handbag’ are the names affectionately given to a precooked, oven roasted chicken delicacy offered by many thousands of supermarkets across the country. Bitter company rivalries have been staged over the product, now a cult staple, and tiered daises form a central pavilion in many such stores.

This ‘handbag’ has been informed by Emma Buswell’s childhood memory when once a year her mother would buy a supermarket roast chicken and a bag of six flour-topped bap buns. This ritual became a luxury - a special treat for participating in the school’s sports carnival day. Sweaty and shaking with anxiety and adrenaline, and with their minds overcome with fear of embarrassment, the artist and her brother would scarf down each morsel - their fevered breaths puffing flour into the world on each exhale, like warm breath in winter.

Buswell asserts that the specialness of this treat is based around the fact that someone else performed the necessary tasks to bring this offering into being. Meticulously constructed from glass beads over many hours, Buswell invests the luxury of time and personal labour back into the chicken bag with her work. It is a preservation and reframing of her memory, objecthood and ideas around aspiration, class, and circumstance.

The unveiling of this work in 2022 prompted a viral moment for roast chook bags and contemporary art more broadly, with Reddit forums, news bulletins, talk back radio and breakfast shows around the country commenting on the quintessentially Australian artwork. In the weeks following, ‘Bachelor’s Handbag’ was announced as Macquarie Dictionary’s People’s Choice Word of the Year, and Coles released a novelty branded roast chicken collaboration with Vegemite.

Winner of the 2022 Invitation Art Prize