digest

1994

 

digest developed out of pondering about my relationship to food in terms of its production, preparation, consumption. The resulting series of four installations are: crave, cook, eat, digestdigest alters the function of the gallery, blurring the distinctions between art exhibit and everyday life. Through my use of cooking and preserving implements and techniques, I give play to the processes of alchemy, allowing the materials to activate the work and to, symbolically, activate the digestive system. Connections are formed between this activity and that of digestion – digestion of food, digestion of information. For instance, I interpret the first stage of good digestion as “Well-Being,” a state of continual movement and change. The cooking pans in the installation have the potential of slowly, but surely, metamorphosing themselves into a different state – from solid iron into powdery oxide. I guide and encourage the transformations by tending to etched images of a digestive system with heat and with corrosive salt water, a substance that defines and enhances the images while simultaneously threatening to destabilize the representations.

 

 


 


media: cast iron pans, salt-water rust, vegetable oil, egg tempera with gold pigment, latex paint, glass jars with Chinese digestive herbs, appliances and shelving
dimensions: installation 250 sq. ft.
digest was first shown in a solo exhibition at 3-4908 rue St. Denis, Montreal. “Well-Being” is in the collection of the Art Bank, Canada Council for the Arts.