The songs were hilarious.....it was a tribute to all things food.....dinner parties, menus, the cult of the celebrity chef, childhood memories, recipe books, magazines and the way that sex and nourishment intermingle....
There were odes to Maggie Beer, Julia Childs, verjuice, afternoon tea, Nigella Lawson....and Sara Lee.
I'm reminded of some collages I made while in Italy in 08, an amazing place for food imagery and consumption....
"Food rules and moves the world. Food is necessity, pleasure and power."
For a vast majority of women in the First World, food is a fetishized matter. From a young age, girls are taught via media and advertising that they should crave and desire food, as they should crave sex, but that they should ultimately deny themselves the pleasure of both. Chocolate bar commercials show women sneaking away to consume a chocolate bar in secret, much in the way one would meet for a sexual liaison. Ice-cream commercials show women sensually buried in Magnum ice-creams, (should I consume the woman as well as the ice-cream?) And in many magazines, sumptuously photographed food is featured alongside size six fashion models. Many women, to some level of extremity have a complex or uncomfortable relationship with food.
While I have moved away from this as a sole concern in my artwork, I have been very interested in the way advertising imagery and social attitudes fetishize female relationships with food. Desire, denial, guilt and secrecy seem to often play a role, with the ultimate goal to be thin and desirable whilst feigning an insatiable, desirous attitude....
At any rate, Matt Fennell will be performing in Melbourne next week. I will certainly try to make it again for a glass o wine and some serious laughs...
8.00pm, Fri 05 Aug, 2011
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