Plat du jour
Switch on the TV nowadays and, chances are, you will find a program on cooking, food or its production.This cultural meme however need not solely be the preserve of the socially aspirant, the gourmand nor the bad tempered chef.
The idea of culinary delight as a fitting subject for art stretches back into darkest history, from the cave walls of Lascaux with its migrating herds, to the fruity conceits of Giuseppe Arcimboldo.
And within the contemporary context reside such treasures as the Futurist Cookbook and Martha Rosler’s ’Semiotics of the Kitchen’.
This month, Ottica TV brings together a selection of artists within this genre to explore the palette if not the palate.
Paul Malone
www.otticatv.co.uk
Artists
- Marlena Novak & Jay Alan Yim, with guest artist Br.. - Chew
- Debra Fear - Broccoli Decadrage
- Massimo Premuda - Popcorning
- Rubber Cripple - CLOT_7
- Eugenia Gortchakova - Breakfast in Rubljovka
- Paul Malone - Cereal City
- Marianna O’Reilly - The Flies
- Zoha Zokaei - And Yet Another Wall
- Susanna Carlisle - Processed Food
- Olga Koroleva - Dialogues
Chew (3:03, 2011) - Marlena Novak & Jay Alan Yim, with guest artist Brittany Ransom
Having enjoyed buying and preparing fresh local foods for many years, we were pleased to see the slow food and locavore movements finally evolving in U.S. cities, such as Chicago. This development has allowed us to posit a more playful perspective in..
Broccoli Decadrage (1:47, 2011) - Debra Fear
A glitch art study that delivers an imperfect plat du jour of Pascal Bonitzers “décadrage” (de-framing) and Gilles Deleuzes hors-champ (out of field) concepts. Part of my work involves trying to understand the philosophical theories of Deleuze withi..
Popcorning (2:46, 2008) - Massimo Premuda
Popcorning of Massimo Premuda is a unique staging. The difference with previous projects is mainly that instead of toys or objects trouvées, a living being on this occasion appears as a symbolic object – a Guinea pig. This animal is here a background..
CLOT_7 (3:00, 2010) - Rubber Cripple
" A one minute piece which delves into a dirty garbage disposal and emerges in a swamp. A very skinny woman preens her ribcage like it were an insect exoskeleton. The scene fills with the sound of rattles as the girl-insect struts through the swamp...
Breakfast in Rubljovka (5:39, 2011) - Eugenia Gortchakova
The video investigates the contrasts in the Russian society after perestroika on the example of residents of Rubljovka (a district near Moscow), to whom usually only the new rich and the political elites are counted. The real residents are season wor..
Cereal City (6:10, 2011) - Paul Malone
Preparing breakfast can be a hazardous business, coming as it does when the chef d’hôte is only recently released from the world of dreams. The colourful world of the Cereal City is here explored by miniature railway. It is however not withou..
The Flies (5:14, 2011) - Marianna O’Reilly
‘Metamorph’ is a part of ‘The Flies’ (2011) video series. Starting as a video response to Sartre’s play ‘The Flies’, in which the author’s philosophical concept ‘that one is condemned to be free’ is explored and qu..
And Yet Another Wall (4:20, 2011) - Zoha Zokaei
Walls are made to give us shelter. Walls are made to divide us. Walls are built to imprison us. Walls are not made out of Gelatine. And Yet Another Wall…
Processed Food (5:08, 2011) - Susanna Carlisle
I videoed the produce, seafood, and meat at markets in Rome and Florence. The images have been displaced and processed with the motion of a dancer to suggest a playful riff on processed food.
Dialogues (5:13, 2011) - Olga Koroleva
Dialogues is an ongoing series of text and video works inspired by the banality of the everyday and our tendency of giving away personal information in a public context. Part 1 features a series of typed text complied from dialogues overheard and rec..