Kitchen Studio, Metro Arts and Brisbane Festival, 2024
Download Catalogue External readingKitchen Studio
Co-Commissioned by Metro Arts and Brisbane Festival.
29 August – 26th October 2024. Open during the day as an installation. 41 performances delivered across the two months.
Created by Elizabeth Willing in collaboration with Speculative Architecture (seating and exhibition design), Anna Whitaker (sound) Chris Howlett (video), and Maisie Crosdale (Creative Producer).
Kitchen Studio is designed for conceptual dining. Walking into the space feels like travelling down an oesophagus, swallowed into a stomach-like room. The curtain walls ripple like villi, deep red with ghostly prints that evoke microscopic worlds. At the centre, nine sculptural chairs sit in an arc, their bright pink and cream curves floating between the organic forms of bodily organs and plumbing - digestion and waste. This is a space that overwhelmingly references the eating body - one ready to host - but what does it mean to be guest here?
In the adjoining space, the kitchen staff can be heard delicately preparing. They blend bespoke teas, ready custom dining tables for each course, compose beautiful chewing gum blends, polish damascus steel plates, fill beeswax vessels with sweet nectar, and infuse shortbread with bodily scents.
A screen sits at the heart of the dining space like a fireplace - a hearth around which the guests will share their experience. The animated host video and its accompanying melodic soundtrack call attention, like a waitress in the dining room, guiding guests through five courses in a choreographed event. Dining is facilitated by three performers who activate the sculptural service objects. There are moments of intense concentration, laughter, curiosity and nostalgia.
The food served in Kitchen Studio is not designed to nourish and satiate; in fact it will make you questions the very act of nourishment. The five courses prompt a reflection on the chemical make-up of what we eat, the processed nature of food, and the ways our food is connected to site and psychology.
- Artist Statement
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body and Queensland Government through Arts Queensland
