Form Feeding
One week collaborative residency with photographer and animator Ruby Ingleheart at Jupiter Gallery, Newlyn, Cornwall.
Form Feeding was an experimental week of researching the rituals and tendencies of the Newlyn general public in relation to food and feasting.
Through conversation and interviews, we collected stories about habits, memories, nostalgia and often childhood connections to food, traditions, community and feasting.
While Ruby documented through film and photography, I interpreted peoples' responses through abstract sketches, taking a particular interest in the hand gestures and body language of individuals and transforming them into forms and sculptural designs.
We also invited visitors to experiment with sculptural pieces I had brought to the exhibtion space. I wanted to see how people interacted with my sculptures playfully, in relation to food and eating.
To collate our findings and offer something back to the public, we ended the week with a 40 person experimental dinner experience inside the exhibition space. The experience consisted of collectively performed gestures inspired by the stories collected over the course of the week, and a potluck feast collated by participants who were asked to bring a dish that means something to them.
A dinner of which started as a mystery, unfolded on the floor of the gallery, began as an orderly affair and ended as a performance of rule breaking and feasting foolery. Laughter was spilt and boundaries crossed, tomatoes squashed and anxiety lost. Anything goes when theres imagination astray and permission to play with your food and share the experience of feeding in a way participants had never feasted before. To be fed or feed as an adult, to steal food from afar or be stolen from, to be silent, hold eye contact, enjoy food theatrically or eat facing a wall while in company are all attempts to explore and loosen our habitual and learnt routeens for eating.
The experimental feast remains predominantly as a collective performance but below is a snippet of the events of the collective piece of work with thanks to those that participated to make such a mischievious and magical night.