A CABINET OF CURIOSITIES
 

As the month of October sees the annual SMH Crave International Food Festival return to feed the rumbling bellies of Sydney's foodies, Chippendale's NG Art Gallery is offering patrons a nourishing experience of a different kind.

The gallery's latest exhibition A Cabinet of Curiosities to be opened by Wayne Tunnicliffe Head Curator of Australian Art, AGNSW on Tuesday 27 September serves up a unique homage to the phenomenon of Food as a personified figure in our lives, courtesy of the introspective, gastro-memories of 21 artists.

Traditionally reserved for eccentric gentry, Cabinets of Curiosities, were precursors to the Modern Museum that attempted to renew marvel in a life beyond nomenclature and provoke a dialogue between seemingly unrelated cultural objects and artifacts.

 

 

 

 

Traveling as far away from the general intuition of eating as a mere ritual of survival, the cabinet’s collective re-examines the very concept of human nourishment and what it is that feeds our own narrative of memory and creativity.

In appropriating such an institution, NG Art Gallery Director Nicky Ginsberg has invited artists such as Archibald Prize finalist James Powditch, prominent photo media artists Anne Zahalka, 2006 Head On Photographic Prize winner Patricia Casey and 2010 Mosman Art Prize winner Craig Waddell, along with NG Art sculptors Jane Gillings, Mai Long, Steven Vella, Susan O'Doherty, hand cut paper artist Lizzie Buckmaster Dove to name but a few, to contribute to the eclectic cabinet-of-all-sorts and reinterpret their own, indeed humanity’s, life long affair with food and the sustenance that feeds this culture.

 

To complement the object based art in the upper gallery, Janet Tavener has been engaged to display photographic works at Mission Restaurant Bar below NG Art Gallery to explore the natural affiliation between lens and food, lens and object and indeed the memory and character contained within objects.

From the weird and wonderful cases illuminated by the late night flickering of a fridge light, to the more nightmarish and profane experiences of separation, abuse and deprivation; the idiosyncratic objects of NG Art Gallery's A Cabinet of Curiosities demonstrate the enduring relationship between, and metaphoric and story-telling possibilities of food and art that prompts us to consider our own relationship with an unassuming, edible life-partner.

 

For further information, please email ng@ngart.com.au

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List of Artists