Candy crash: Artworks that look like sweetshop nightmares

James Ostrer's affair with junk food began in earnest after his parents divorced. Every weekend his father would collect the children (he was often late; it was a tense handover) and take them to McDonald's, which Ostrer came to view as "a place of relaxation and fun".

Ever since, he says, "when I feel distressed, I will go straight for this kind of food." Which, in a roundabout sort of way, is why he has spent at least £5,000 in the last two years on Mars bars, Jelly Babies, strawberry bootlaces and other sweets and crisps, reports The Guardian.

This vast stash was not for eating, but to be used in human sculptures through which Ostrer would explore his relationship with junk food, and perhaps even rid himself of his addiction. He and others were caked in cream cheese that had been dyed lurid colours, inlaid with, as Ostrer puts it, "scientifically produced items developed to attract us without any nutritional value".

The photographs in which the artist documented this exercise are by turns grotesque, hilarious and tragic. They are the childhood dream of the gingerbread house – a world spun from sugar – turned nightmare. And appearing, as they are, in the same year in which the notion of sugar addiction has been widely accepted into the public consciousness and been blamed outright for the obesity epidemic, it's hard not to see in them an element of harsh truth.

Some of the caricatures that Ostrer has created, with their bulging gelatin eyes and misshapen heads, have an alien quality. Others use generic tribal imagery in a reference to ancient hunter-gatherers who, he imagines, had to endure multiple bee stings to score some honey. Now, he says, "you just have to stick your hand out and grab a whole pile of things from the checkout. It's not special any more."