Fine Art Gallery
Kitchen Scenes
Exhibited at ‘Dialogues and Disclosures’ at The Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield 2004 and at ‘Suspended’ at The Workstation, 2003 (Arts Council funded)
This series of works explicitly references the classic seventeenth century ‘kitchen scene’ paintings of Flemish and Dutch artists such as Snyders, Uytewael and, Ryck as well as Velasquez’s bodegones, which were themselves influenced by Dutch and Flemish still lives. Tables groaning under the weight of fresh produce, familiar from the seventeenth century still lives, have been replaced here by packaged and processed items typical of a twenty-first century kitchen.
A series of four identical images of a bunch of flowers titled ‘spring, summer, autumn, winter’ provides a poignant contrast to the traditional seasonal series produced in the seventeenth century.
Just as the Kitchen Scenes of the Flemish and Dutch masters provided a commentary on the increasing commercialisation of agriculture and the greed and excess of Europe’s proto-capitalist landed gentry in the seventeenth century, so this series of photographs raises questions over the production, packaging and promotion of food under global capitalism in the twenty-first century.
The images were photographed using a brown backdrop and subtle lighting
and then canvas-bonded to achieve the look and mood of the seventeenth century
originals.