September 7 – October 28, 2007
Regardless of circumstance, this imperative shapes our daily existence. For nutrition, for pleasure or as a necessity of life, what constitutes food is defined by the myriad choices, or lack thereof, that we are presented with and what we choose to accept.
The world we live in keeps changing. What was once considered healthy, novel, convenient, has become questionable, disconcerting, and highly debated. Increased instances of disease and illness have led us to question the environments we inhabit and the substances we consume in an attempt to identify and define our boundaries and our assailants.
The need for speed, the inclination to achieve more, faster, and the quest for efficiency and accessing products from around the globe, have led food production, presentation and consumption procedures and practices into areas whose consequences and impacts may not have been sufficiently understood in their nascent stages.
Injecting a sense of fun, levity and love into our world of fast foods and efficiency, the Food Jammers evoke history to celebrate our engagement with food by concocting new recipes and madcap technologies. Máximo González fashions the tools necessary for a political uprising from the most common and commonly overlooked of South American kitchen ingredients: the chilli pepper. Jill Greenberg’s larger-than-life photo series, End Times, laments the severed connections to our most basic needs, sustenance among them. The film Our Daily Bread by Nikolaus Geyrhalter gives a graphic account of the industrial production of food – the means by which efficiency is achieved. Adam Bellavance’s Problem Solved II strips bare the ultimate branded beverage, transforming it into the most precious of natural resources: water. Shelly Rahme’s Greasy Strata looks to landscape to explore the capacity of modified food products to fuel us in some way, while questioning our willingness to accept what is presented to us as food. Excerpts from Allyson Mitchell and Fiona Smyth’s forthcoming film Foodie poses the question: “What is food when our relationship to it becomes wholly detached?” Everything becomes food in Corinna Schnitt’s once upon a time as animals wreak havoc on a middle class suburban home. Henrik Schrat’s all-consuming exterior and interior mural, Meatcandy, evokes everyday cycles of the production and distribution of food, as dark figures churn out fodder off a monstrous, hybrid intestinal/industrial production line for the assembled masses.
For survival or for other reasons, we eat the food that is placed in front of us, that we can get our hands on, or that meets the refined standards informed by the diverse range of tastes and appetites that we allow ourselves to be governed by. Eat the Food! interferes with many of our assumptions surrounding food, the food industry, its production, its distribution, and the very essence of the matter we call food.
Curated by Camilla Singh
Featuring a live installation/intervention by 2boys.tv (Stephen Lawson & Aaron Pollard)
Adam Bellavance
Food Jammers (Nobu Adilman, Micah Donovan & Christopher Martin)
Nikolaus Geyrhalter
Máximo González
Jill Greenberg
Shelly Rahme
Allyson Mitchell & Fiona Smyth
Corinna Schnitt
Henrik Schrat
Live culinary events in October by Susur Lee, Mike Murphy
Installation photos: Walter Willems
Opening Reception
Friday September 7, 7 – 10 pm
