Ingredients, Method, Serving Suggestion

2016 Curatorial Fellowship - Alaena Turner

Ingredients, Method, Serving Suggestion  brought together an intergenerational group of artists to explore the relationship between contemporary art and the everyday, through the conceptual framework of the recipe. The instructive form of the recipe enables material knowledge to be shared through collective acts of repetition and interpretation, situating the recipe as the historical precedent for open-source models of knowledge distribution. The idea of the recipe was then expanded by asking how an artwork itself may function as a recipe, engaging with the history of conceptual art made through instruction.

Central to the exhibition was a series of paintings made by 14 artists in response to a Yoko Ono score, 'Time Painting', "Make a painting in which the colour comes out under a certain light at a certain time of the day. Make it a short time. (1961 Summer)". Whilst working from the same conceptual starting point the paintings displayed a diverse range of creative interpretations, utilising phosphorescent pigments, reflections, light-sensitive emulsion, and shadows, and referencing imagery of lenses, windows and sun-dials. As a collection of responses the paintings both hosted and inhabited the original Yoko Ono score, drawing out the poetic quality of the original linguistic gesture, and challenging the apparent opposition between conceptual art and painting practice.

To complement this collection of paintings new works which frame production processes were generated by Natasha Kidd and Bruce McLean (working in collaboration with Eddie Farrell). These works were developed to present the 'live' moment of a creative practice, positioning painting as verb rather than noun. Natasha Kidd's work proposed a system for a painting that makes itself, encouraging the aesthetic contemplation of the routine application of paint on a surface. Bruce McLean offered a re-enactment of his 1969 work 'Underwater Watercolour', which was produced into a film by Eddie Farrell, making visible the narratives that emerge through the act of repetition, and signalling the absence of the original artwork.

Gary Woodley was commissioned to produce a 'Mobile Kitchen Workstation', adapted from a 1963 design 'Kitchen Box' by Italian designer Joe Colombo (1930-1971). The artwork facilitated the re-enactment of artist recipes and presentations using food during the program of events.

Over the course of the exhibition period a series of 15 'Do It' Instructions from Han's Ulrich Obrist's ongoing global project were realised in the exhibition space. These instructions were selected for their innovative propositions of how to use everyday materials, framing A.P.T Gallery as both exhibition and work-space.