Throughout the festival, Selfridges Manchester Exchange Square will also double up as an ‘Intervention Space’, an extension of ‘The Find’. Across the store, you can discover posters with phrases from the artwork and collect a memento from one of Ryan’s famous vending machines, which will display stones and pebbles formed over thousands of years. 

Ryan uses the medium of vending machines to raise questions about how and why we value certain objects. “It occurred to me, sitting on a pebble beach with my kids, that we were surrounded by artworks,” he says. “Every stone in sight was completely unique, took 50,000 years to make and held the geological traces of the history of the earth during the time humankind has inhabited it. We often mistake things of value for being throwaway, and those things that have little significance with great amounts of value. What is it to put a price on an object? How can value be determined? Is a £10 note even worth the paper it is printed on? Is time not our greatest asset?” 

All vending machine proceeds will go towards the Artist Development programme at Factory International: the organisation behind both Manchester International Festival, and Aviva Studios, the landmark cultural space opening in the heart of Manchester.