Documentation: grape spiders

At the start of August, I took a couple of prints and the grocery bags to gift as a thank you to the people at Mercy Radiology and MPI for letting me use their scanners and pick their brains. They were stoked, and said they would frame the prints and put them on display in both workplaces! At Mercy they also said I was more than welcome to come back and do some more X-rays. The images I’ve been using are getting a bit tired so I might just take them up on that offer…

While I was at the MPI headquarters, they also asked if they could use the image for marketing/publicity graphics. I really hope something comes out of that.

I also got talking with Dale about the fruit fly and other instances of imported fruit contamination, including a recent recall of grapes from Mexico which were found to be infested with black widow spiders.

That discussion led to a little screen print drawing:

Resized

(if I do any more with this idea then next time the spider will be more subtle, orangey-coloured)

Henry Hargreeves

Henry Hargreeves (whose work featured in the NZ herald the other day) is a Kiwi artist who works with food items.
While conceptually simplistic, there are some witty ideas at play and his photo-series are all technically very well executed.

Documentation week 22: petri dishes, second incarnation

Following from my kiwifruit sculpture, I did a few more petri dish works, using other fruits/veggies and techniques...

A banana.

As they were cut into 5mm segments, the fruits/veggies each became 3 times its height when separated and stacked. I loved the ridiculousness of it.

I then realised that from the one banana, I could make 2 or 3 smaller ones simply by dividing the layers evenly. Above is one banana turned into two; every second dish separated.

The next experiment was removing the banana from its peel on each layer, resulting in one banana-flesh and one empty peel retaining its shape.

I did the same with a kiwifruit and tomato, taking only each 2nd/3rd segment to 'compress' the form back into a life-size height.
Then I tried stacking them all on top of each other. They were deliberately chosen for their colours - thinking here about 'traffic light' food labelling.

'Doctor Death' Bodies

I've always been fascinated by the idea+content of the infamous 'Body Show.' Although it seems there are various incarnations of it worldwide, including:

• 'Human Bodies'
• 'Body Worlds: the exhibition' (as described here) (and there's a museum too)
• Bodies: the exhibition (also on wikipedia)
• The Human Body exhibition
• Bodies Revealed (controversy alert!)

My recent line of work has made me think about this... the idea of 'medical' material on display, science on exhibition, the place where the science/medical world meets the art world; the process itself of deconstruction, extraction, + plasticisation; and fundamentally, a sort of universal 'sick fascination', the human desire to dissect, understand, preserve, and display...

(this post is to point out the link/influence between these bodies and my latest outcomes)

Documentation week 22: edamame pattern

A result of my conundrum over whether to use green or red prints on the mouse trap works.

Thinking a lot lately about optics, optical illusions, the 'mechanical eye' vs the human eye, printmaking/filmic 'flatness' and 3-dimensionality - i.e. the difference between an x-ray image and actual 3D object being scanned; again the dichotomy of food choices - soy in particular, as a supposed healthy/sustainable superfood and simultaneously a health nightmare and corrupt industry... anyway this is just a drawing really:

that came as a result of these initial patterns:

"Redamame." Hur hur.

Some readings on sustainability and health

"What is a sustainable healthy diet?" Tara GarnettFood Climate Research Network April 2014

...if demand can be moderated, then an alternative scenario may be preferred. Here cereal crops are grown only for human consumption and farm animals are confined to grazing on pasture or consuming byproducts. This „livestock for resource efficiency‟ scenario could yield genuine ecosystem benefits but the amount of meat and dairy products available for consumption will be low....the more of an animal one is prepared to eat, the fewer animals are needed for a given quantity of meat. Such meat will include both cuts and organs that are low in fat – liver, kidneys, lean muscle – as well as fattier parts that are processed with added salt to improve palatability – sausages, mince, burgers and nuggets. This suggests a potential trade off between resource efficiency and nutritional quality.
While simple answers are not possible, what is clear is that an environmentally sustainable level of meat production will be substantially lower than the norm for high income consumers today. 

One thing is clear: the food system today is unsustainable, whether defined in narrow environmental terms or more broadly to include socio-economic dimensions.
Something needs to be done, as most people acknowledge. There is growing recognition that a shift towards „sustainable diets‟ is one important approach – although this recognition is by no means widespread. At this stage however, definitions are multiple and there is no unanimous agreement of just what such a diet might look like on a plate, as it were.
Such a diet may compromise on certain nutritional ideals but it certainly represents a significant improvement on the quality of the average British diet today. However not everyone likes compromises. Disagreements are likely to continue as to whether nutritional guidance should prioritise societal over individual objectives; the needs of people today and in this country, over generations tomorrow and in other countries; the legitimacy of measures such as GM and fortification strategies in compensating for deficits; and the relative importance assigned to non-nutritional determinants of health. Critically, there will be strong disagreement as to whether people can actually be persuaded to eat like this, and if persuasion is not possible, what level of coercion (through prices, regulations and so forth) might be legitimate or effective.
Moving beyond a narrow environmental focus, we know far less about the complex relationship between nutritional objectives, environmental sustainability and our other social and economic goals. This is partly because most of the work on sustainable diets has been driven by the environmental agenda – understandably so, in view of the massive environmental problems we face. However it also reflects the fact that social and economic objectives are extremely hard to agree upon. For example: food should be affordable, but does that mean that cheap food is good? Is small scale or large scale production to be preferred? Is equality an end in itself or can its pursuit stifle innovation? There may well be synergies between nutritional adequacy, environmental sustainability and certain economic goals, but there are also likely to be costs and deciding how they should balanced between the two depends on one‟s ideological position. What is more, some economic benefits are only likely to ensue if certain changes are made to the workings of the economy – and there will be disagreements as to how far that is possible.
Finally, this chapter has been as much about values as about „science.‟ While scientific knowledge – including in the fields of nutrition and the environment - may be important, the meaning people assign to its insights will be influenced by beliefs about what is right and wrong, about how the world works and how it ought to work. Any discussion of sustainability and which we should go, has to take into account, and explore, the values that stakeholders bring to the debate. 

"Sustainable diets for the future: Can we contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by eating a healthy diet?" ARTICLE in AMERICAN JOURNAL OF CLINICAL NUTRITION · AUGUST 2012

"A UK public health perspective: what is a healthy sustainable diet?"  H. Riley and J. L. Buttriss

"Is a healthy diet an environmentallysustainable diet?" ARTICLE in PROCEEDINGS OF THE NUTRITION SOCIETY · NOVEMBER 2012

Animal testing?

Documentation weeks 15-18 'Have you ever seen such a thing in your life'

Have you ever seen such a thing in your life
Watercolours on paper, 55x73cm

Notes and working images here

Documentation week 14 - beeswax wrap

 This has got to be the thriftiest thing I have ever made.

I've been keeping the winter blues at bay by lighting candles in the evening, and avoiding paraffin candles in favour of beeswax ones from the farmer's market. Anyway, I had some leftover candle stubs from these.

When I was printing the textiles for these bags, I brought along some scrap fabric to do a test print on. I'm glad I held onto it afterwards.

Leftover beeswax + leftover scrap fabric + leftover test print = ...

A re-usable alternative to plastic wrap. Up-cycled three ways. Coated in beeswax, it seals containers, sticks to itself and to other surfaces, softened by the warmth of your fingers. And it smells amazing.

Documentation week 14: rats

An a4 watercolour sketch based on these images. I'm fascinated by the whole Seralini controversy and am working on some more images with these rats.
Three blind mice.

Taide

An article in a Finnish magazine that Jane showed me. I can't understand the article but it did give me some leads to several contemporary artists working (however remotely) with food, who I never would have heard of otherwise: Tytti Korin, Heidi Huovinen, Anne Alalantela, and Saara-Maria Kariranta.

Nick Veasy

The Adobe packaging design that George mentioned:

These images were made by an artist called Nick Veasy, a photographer who specialises in X-ray imagery.

His website, and here are some of his works:

And of course...