Inedible Culinary Exercises

For the past few weeks I have had my commercial head thoroughly screwed on. As a contemporary artist untroubled by the stigma that is ‘making a bit of money’, I have decided to thrust myself into the realm of selling my work at a stall on a bank holiday weekend. Well, sort of.

Bird’s Yard is an independent shop that showcases local art and craft in Sheffield, and as such, seems like an ideal venue for which to see whether the paints I make have any commercial value. Moreover, the event Bird’s Yard is holding – Named ‘Farm Yard’ – centres on the theme of food and local produce: Doubly ideal then, seeing as the paints I make are made from ground food, egg yolk and a bit of sunflower oil. I will be unleashing my paints onto the steely gaze of the general public between 12pm and 4pm at Bird’s Yard on Saturday 24th May.

As well as my paints, I shall be selling work made using my paints, as well as giving the public a chance to attend a paint making workshop – which will give people the opportunity to make their own paints from food.

I shall also be selling other food related goodies, including paintings of fruit that are sold like fruit – cheaply and with a discount for bulk buying. Not to mention prints of teabags for a little as £1; postcards of my work and two zines that detail my fascination with mould and my desire to create a cookbook.

As an exercise in aligning the status of art to the status of food, I’d wager that holding a stall at an event such as this gives the opportunity for food within the realms of fine art to collaborate with its tangible and real-life subjects. For art to fall seamlessly alongside that which it is depicting is able to at once ground artistic practice and allow food to transcend it’s physical properties. I want my work to depict and relate to the value of food. Therefore allowing it to integrate an event that caters to the needs of greengrocers, bakers, preserve makers, and food proprietors successfully addresses my needs in an identifiable way.

As previously mentioned, Bird’s Yard on Chapel Walk will host ‘Farm Yard at Bird’s Yard’ on Saturday, May 24, from noon to 4pm. Why not pop along and see what’s going on? It is free entry, after all.

Two weeks ago I embarked on a journey to Jamestown, NY, in order to install and create work for an exhibition which was to be held over two gallery spaces from 4th April until 24th April. It was a massive venture into the unknown, which removed me from familiarity and demanded that myself and my work engage with an entirely new audience.

It was a group exhibition, held by SCIBase, which saw over 20 international artists produce work loosely based on the theme of ‘Colonize’. The piece I created contained sixteen foods locally sourced from Jamestown. The intent was to create a cohesive piece of work that would pull foods originating from various corners of the world into an inclusive environment, allowing each food to correspond to each other and to an audience.

So, was the exhibition itself a success? Yes, it was. My work was generally very well received and attracted a lot of interest. A potent mix of providing Jamestown with something they hadn’t seen before and the excitement created by virtue of having international artists exhibiting provided all artists involved with a real satisfaction.

My work responded well both to the environment and to the other works on display. There was a coherence found within the display that was unexpected – as we did not know exactly what some of the work would look like. And, upon spending several days getting acquainted with the exhibition and allowing myself to absorb it, it struck me how effectively the work of Bruce Davies informed my piece. Both our works use memory as a device to drive evocations, and we both utilise non-visual ways of communicating. So you could engage with my piece whilst still being able to hear Bruce’s sculpture, and interact with Bruce’s work whilst still being able to smell the food I had used in my work. A very tangible sensory assault – informed by memory and the evocations found within memory – was present.

If I was to pull anything negative from my time at Jamestown it would be aimed squarely at the work I produced. Paint making has become part of my identity but I feel increasingly as though I am being predictable. Perhaps it was a subconscious search for familiarity in the wake of embarking on a journey to a place I have never been to, with people I didn’t know. I just feel too accustomed to the practice, and too much within my comfort zone. I need to challenge myself before I seek to create challenging work.

Upon departing, it hit me: Paint making as an avenue of enquiry has reached a logical conclusion. The piece I presented in Jamestown contained further conceptual mileage, as it considered the use of local produce against exported produce and aspired towards a cohesive and inclusive piece of work. The concept of colonisation was therefore instilled into the work successfully. But now what? Food, as a concept and paint, as a concept are rich sources of investigation and inspiration that transcend the practice of paint making.

I decree that it is time to explore new heights. I would suggest that my time in Jamestown affirmed my desire to research new avenues of enquiry in order to further my practice. Looking ahead, I am going to curate and organise a couple of shows around the theme of video games – something pretty removed from my current practice, though the nostalgia and evocations found within video games do resonate with the sensations of experiencing food. I am also going to collaborate with Sharon Mossbeck on a piece for the Liverpool Biennial on the theme of Leviathan. Again, whilst this is seemingly removed from the practice of re-imagining still life there are parallels to be explored.

So, I would like to thank my experience in Jamestown for providing me with the apparatus I needed to instigate furthering my practice. Now it’s time to see what else I can do.

A little over a week ago ‘Shelf Life’ – my solo exhibition at Gage Gallery, Sheffield – came to an end. I have had a fair few group shows prior to this, but I would say that ‘Shelf Life’ was my first true solo exhibition. As such, it involved a great deal of organising, developing and promoting. There was a sense of relief when everything was sorted and I could just relax and allow others to engage with my work.

Whilst I can be relatively pleased with the effort I went to in order to promote the exhibition, I don’t feel as though the amount of work I did promoting correlates to the overall attendance. Perhaps this is something a lot of artists feel. On reflection though, I suppose that an emerging artist exhibiting in an emerging gallery in the winter is never going to draw hordes of visitors. Plus I believe it pays to never underestimate the unreliably of people. Anyway, let’s not descend into bitterness and instead focus on the positives.

As a personal exercise, what I wanted to achieve from ‘Shelf Life’ was an informed understanding of what elements of my practice are coherent enough to be developed. And that’s exactly what I got. The basic act of getting work up on the walls and looking to see what works and what doesn’t clarifies your approach and allows you to gather the knowledge required in order to progress. There is a certain therapy in ascertaining strong works from weak ones, and developing a greater affinity with your finished works. Perhaps this is especially true of conceptual artists, where it is the idea that takes precedence and as such, allows the actual work to be overlooked. I believe there is a balance to be found between concept and aesthetics and I believe that exhibiting allows this balance to be realised.

So, was the exhibition successful? Well, yes: It was well received by those who did visit and the process allowed me to develop my practice further. As a first solo exhibition, it helped me refine my body of work and, in turn, has potentially enabled me to hold more disciplined and coherent exhibitions in the future. Yes, it would have been nice to have sold more work, and it would have been nice if it was a little better attended, but it was not expected. I am happy with ‘Shelf Life’s’ achievements and it provides a solid marker I

Whilst ‘Shelf Life’ – My exhibition currently showing at Gage Gallery, Sheffield – covers a broad spectrum of concerns regarding food, one of its most coherent avenues of enquiry is the principle of aligning the value of art to the value of its subject: If a piece of fruit can be purchased with ease from a market stall then, in the interests of engaging an audience directly and with sincerity, a depiction of fruit should be purchased similarly.

So in that spirit, I present to you a body of work that incorporates the monetary value of painting into its conceptual grounding. In short, I have completed over 20 paintings of 7 different fruits, and I seek to sell them at the lowest price possible. The paintings are rough, honest works that will readily provide you with the same nourishment as a work that seeks perfection, only in a way that is accessible and relevant.

Each fruit painting is on sale for just £5. Or you can buy 5 fruit paintings for £20. Not only does this relate to the concept of aligning art to its subject, but it also offers you the opportunity to buy original paintings at a very reasonable price. In doing so, you’ll also be supporting art in relation to the local community, and that’s always good.

If you’d like to buy any of my fruit paintings, then come along to Gage Gallery, Kelham Island, Sheffield, where they’ll be on display until 12th March. Alternatively you can email me about them, and I’ll see if I can arrange getting them to you. My email is [email protected]. Come get ‘em while they’re fresh!

Over the last month I have been feverishly painting as many pictures of fruit as I can; applying paint directly to loaves of bread; wrapping apples in modroc; painting works of still life; looking long and hard at pictures of burgers and applying thirty-two homemade egg tempera paints to a board.

So, why the hell am I doing all this? Well, because each of these endeavours form some part of my upcoming solo exhibition – named ‘Shelf Life’ – which will be held at Gage Gallery: A gallery space that forms part of Kelham Island Arts Co-Operative (or KIAC,) in Sheffield.

‘Shelf Life’ seeks to question the role of food in art. This includes questioning our perception of value, re-imagining the genre of still life, an enquiry into how emotion can be attached to disposable produce, and a documentation of the trials of trying to render the invisible sensations of taste and smell visible, with coherence.

Food is, of course, a massive topic, and will undoubtedly become a lifelong investigation. What I hope an audience can gain from this exhibition is an informed and clearer understanding of their own thoughts towards the nature and properties of food, and a place for which such thoughts to coalesce and crystallise. Further, I wish to question pre-conceptions towards the value of art, and attempt to ground it within the identifiable realities of purchasing consumable products. I believe that art should relate to the subject it is rendering as seamlessly as possible, and aligning the status of art to the status of food allows my work to become direct, accessible and relevant.

The exhibition runs from 28/02/14 until 14/03/14. There is also a private viewing of the show on 28/02/14 from 7pm. I hope you can make it.

In addition to my exhibition, and coinciding with it, comes my Paint Making Workshop, due to be held at KIAC’s Education Space on 1st March:

Participants of this workshop will be shown a working demonstration of the paint making process, before having a go at creating paints for themselves, and applying them to a surface. Participants will gain valuable experience in developing an affinity with their materials, which I believe is integral to producing coherent works of art.

The workshop takes place from 10am til 3pm on 1st March, and costs £20 (or £15 for students) and promises to be a fun and worthwhile day.

I hope that something within these events is intriguing and I hope for as many of you to attend as possible. You can find more information about these events on my Facebook events. Just click here. Or feel free to send me an email at [email protected].

Thank you.