Michelle Matthews
food
People mill about the juicy cornucopia that spills from the small gallery into the street. Some stand, briefly, brows slightly furrowed, before moving to the wine table. Others lean forward, pointing out details to companions. Someone reaches out, plucks a grape from the display, and pops it into their mouth.
“I didn’t expect people to eat it,” says Paco Rodrigues of his sculpture, “but when I thought about it, I wasn’t upset that they did.”
I’m speaking to Rodrigues on a Friday afternoon, when he has an open studio at the Mark Coetzee Fine Art Cabinet in Bree Street. Rodrigues is visiting on a Fulbright Scholarship and is using Coetzee’s space vacant since he accepted the directorship of the Rubell art collection in Miami to create his assemblages.
Twist, a metal chain woven with fresh fruit, leaves and flowers, was shown at the December Church Street Art Walk. Rodrigues is working with food again for the pieces he’ll show at the next Art Walk on Monday March 26. He has sourced retro kitchen cabinets, which he is collaging with recipe cards from the Sixties and Seventies. On the evening the shelves will be bursting with the food of those times dishes of the ham-in-aspic variety.
I smile at the old recipe cards. Thirty years ago these orangey pictures of food looked appetising, but today they’re just heart-burn inducing, what with the move towards crisp, light recipe book photos.
I’m thinking about the colour of food when I visit John Hodgekiss’s exhibition at The Cold Room (143 Harrington Street, Gardens) the next morning. About half of the Negative show is close-ups of meat as it comes out on a photographic negative cyan coloured. Bright blue food, which doesn’t exist in nature, is alienating to humans, which explains why only toddlers who’ll nibble on dog food and ants drink bubblegum milkshakes.
The hunks of meat therefore don’t remind one of flesh, but take on patterns one wouldn’t normally see in one’s lamb chop. As Hodgekiss points out, they still look organic, reflecting larger fractals like landscapes or smaller ones like bacteria.
These negative prints of strange meat are spaced between images of animal skulls and human x-rays, consistent with the artist’s fascination with anatomy. The bones are also in negative, showing up solid and black. The skulls are just beautiful, but it was the x-rays that got me thinking. According to Hodgekiss, they are “intimate portraits of ourselves, not clouded with perceptions of skin colour or creed”. A universality is achieved by stripping away the skin with the skin goes the context. Why did his mother have head scans? Where exactly are those staples in that man’s groin? The x-rays balance well with the animal elements of the show for example, a tangled strip of boerewors resonates with our intestines.
Why the talk of digestive organs? ‘Cause a girl’s gotta eat, dammit! And I had the scrummiest time at Gorgeous in Loop Street on Friday night.
I last saw actor Peter Hayes the owner of this popular new restaurant chopping and frying in the culinary theatrical experience Play With Your Food with Gatan Schmidt (who has a mussel dish named after him at Gorgeous). It was an act I saw repeated on my way to the bathroom. I always trust a place that has a window into their kitchen.
I had a tangy salmon in citrus dill sauce, a lot of Chardonnay, my tarot cards read (a service offered on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays) and a nice chat with Peter. I’ve heard some people say about the menu, “Well, it’s not anything I couldn’t make at home.” Exactly. Gorgeous is friendly and frill-less and you don’t have to do the dishes! Just remember to phone and book. While you’re there, if the food, the company or the ginger, Chivas Regal and Frangelico on crushed ice has inspired the artist in you, you can order a disposable camera from the waiter.
Paco Rodrigues has an open studio at the Mark Coetzee Fine Art Cabinet, 120 Bree Street, Cape Town from noon to 5pm on Fridays. Negative is showing at The Cold Room, 143 Harrington Road, Gardens, until April 5. Gorgeous is located at 210 Loop Street, Cape Town. Tel: (021) 424 4554. Closed Mondays