MOST people blearily chuck them in a bowl, shower them with milk and shovel them in without much thought.

But for Anne Griffiths, cornflakes are not for eating.

Instead the artist uses the popular breakfast cereal to create peculiar art, pinning individual flakes into a display case and categorising each with a number according to its characteristics.

The wacky masterpiece - named Taxonomy of the Cornflake - has been chosen by famously eccentric artist Grayson Perry for the Royal Academy of Arts' Summer Exhibition.

This year is the 250th anniversary of the exhibition in London, which opened last week and celebrates contemporary art.

Ms Griffiths, who lives in Wantage, said: "It’s been mad. I’ve got all these people ringing up asking if I can make them one.

"It's really nice to stand in the corner and see people looking at it and taking a picture, that's the brilliant bit."

The art piece features an array of different cornflakes, each numerically coded depending on features such as brand, texture, shape and colour.

Anyone can enter work to be considered for the exhibition and more than 20,000 entries were slimmed down to just 1,300.

Asked where the idea for the cornflake panel came from, she said: “I can’t answer that - where do these ideas come from? I really don’t know.

"They are pinned almost like butterflies or insects would be, I wanted it to look ontological."

Ms Griffiths said she had been a keen collector since a young age, and remembers amassing stacks of ice lolly sticks aged 10.

She added: “I collect ring pulls from cans, coffee cup lids, beer bottle lids and old light bulbs.”

Most live at her studio in Magdalen Road, East Oxford.

One of her cornflake art pieces has been on display in a tiny gallery in New York for five years, and she said the cereal still looked as good as new.

Asked if she uses other cereal for art or other types of food, the answer was a resounding no.

She added: "It's always cornflakes. I suppose it's because there are so many variations - every single one is unique.

"Every time I sift through [a box] I find something new.

"Millions are created every day and they travel around in these boxes on great big lorries getting smashed about and put on shelves - it's that whole process."

Ms Griffiths, formerly a college textiles teacher in Gloucestershire, graduated from a BA degree in fine art at Oxford Brookes University on Tuesday.

She exhibited her degree work in a final show called 'Hoi Poi' last month alongside fellow students on the course.

The cornflake pieces are one aspect of her portfolio, and her artwork is also inspired by history and Japanese philosophy.

She also takes part in community art projects and is working on one in Faringdon to mark 800 years of its farmer's market.