Fickle Food Upon A Shifting Plate

Knut Ivar Aaser, Helene Appel, Nicholas Cheveldave, Rhys Coren, Alex Frost, Daniel Gordon, Emma Hart, Alex Olson, Laurence Owen, Tyra Tingleff

Curated by Tayah Leigh Barrs and organised with Laurence Owen

Studio_Leigh is pleased to present Fickle Food Upon A Shifting Plate. The exhibition gathers the work of ten artists around the subject of consumption. Set above a commercial restaurant’s kitchens the exhibition riffs on the parallel between art and food as creations to be consumed and around the similarities between looking and tasting, understanding and chewing, investing and digesting.

The spheres of fine art and fine dining have each evolved to meet the demand for elaborate, evocative consumables. Whether designed for the eye or for the tongue, the objects made to participate in these consumption cycles are destined for insatiable palettes that are sickeningly spoiled yet perpetually hungry. At a time in which consumer culture seems to be approaching rupture, Fickle Food Upon A Shifting Plate contemplates the pleasures and perils of that which we desire to devour.

A selection of paintings and sculptures is brought together to explore this fine line between attraction and repulsion. Intimations of nausea and gluttony come into play as the exhibition nudges at how human nature so readily tips satisfaction over into indulgence. Textures seem to ooze, while images tempt, and symbols decompose. Imagery is gorged and overflowing here, then sickeningly sweet there. When brought together, the contrasting array of works on show prods at the question, ‘When does pleasure-seeking become over-consumption? How much is too much?’.

The weight of food as a subject through art history inevitably echoes behind the show’s central concept. From Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s fruit faces to Salvador Dali’s lobster telephone and Meret Oppenheim's furry teacup and spoon – to name but a few – the subject of edibility and the surrealism of representing it ceaselessly fascinates artists and their audiences. Subsequently each artwork brings its own set of historical references and material tensions into Fickle Food Upon A Shifting Plate.

The exhibition takes its title from the 1702 Emily Dickenson poem Fame is a Fickle Food, which intimates the caprice of artistic success within the language of feast and famine:

Fame is a fickle food

Upon a shifting plate

Whose table once a

Guest but not

The second time is set

Whose crumbs the crows inspect

And with ironic caw

Flap past it to the

Farmer’s corn

Men eat of it and die