Australasian & Culture

ISSUE 29 · FEBRUARY to APRIL 2020 Clara Adolphs, Patrizia Biondi, Louise Bonnet, Sinéad Burke, Michael Georgetti, Nan Goldin, Robert Klippel, Daniel Lismore, Kate Newby, NIRIN, Stuart Ringholt, , Monster Theatres, AUS $ 19.95 NZ 25.00 AUS Elizabeth Willing, Western Desert Art Movement & more ELIZABETH WILLING THE ART OF HOSTING Elizabeth Willing uses food as both the material and subject for her objects and performances, prompting viewers to think about the experiences surrounding food. FEATURE by HAMISH SAW YER

60 61 incorporating aspects of the artist’s own relationship between artist, object biography. Through the Mother, Willing’s and viewer. 2019 exhibition at the University of Another project, Pith, presented at Queensland (UQ) Art Museum, allowed Caloundra Regional Gallery in late the artist to reflect on her mother’s 2019, considered Willing’s memories use of herbs to treat anxiety. Visitors and experiences of food and agricultural entered the exhibition through a narrow production as a child growing up in the corridor, the walls covered in white Sunshine Coast hinterland. For this patchouli-infused wax. Bouquets of exhibition, Willing produced a new series herbs were suspended from the ceiling, of objects and images that focused on the contributing an olfactory quality interconnected relationship between to the installation. Inside the body, land and food. the dimly lit gallery A floral wallpaper space, one wall was spanning the length decorated with the of the gallery space, pressed flowers of Golden Lily (After the St John’s wort William Morris) plant, commonly (2019) depicted used as a mild flowers of various antidepressant. agricultural plants Visitors were grown within the encouraged to sit Sunshine Coast at a wooden table, region. These flowers engraved with dried have to be pollinated flowers, to consume a by bees in order to cup of tea blended with produce the fruit that valerian, a natural sleeping aid. humans consume. Referencing As the recipient of the museum’s the current decline of bee populations inaugural window commission, Willing worldwide, Willing’s wallpaper highlights also covered the glass facade of the the fragile interdependence of the human building with a large line drawing body, its food sources and the landscape. depicting medicinal plants including Endless Host (2019) comprises a series eucalyptus and marijuana. Through the of three tables crafted from the timber of Mother is difficult to describe in words or mango, pecan and lily pilly trees, sourced capture in images; in an age of Instagram and milled within the Sunshine Coast art, Willing engages all of the senses, region. Their minimalist, cubic forms transforming the traditionally passive reference the work of artists such as

Elizabeth Willing’s participatory artwork machine”: drawing upon stories of her Pick-me-up (2019) does just that. On first grandmother’s cooking, reflecting the glance the work appears to be a minimal traditional, maternal role of nurturer and painting with a metallic red surface; feeder within families. Conversely, the closer inspection reveals the painting artist is fascinated by haute cuisine, still is in fact a grid of individually wrapped largely the domain of male chefs, which Kinder chocolates. The audience is allows her to consider food trends and invited to open one of the wrappers and the performance of dining. As Pick-me- eat its contents. The work is consumed up demonstrates, Willing also works with over the duration of the exhibition the highly processed, artificial products (although it rarely lasts that long), of industrial food manufacture. leaving only the torn foil wrappers. Research forms the backbone of There is a long and rich relationship Willing’s practice. During 2019, the artist between contemporary art and food, from undertook a three-month residency at Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s notorious the Australian Wine Research Institute 1930 Manifesto of Futurist Cooking to in Adelaide, facilitated by the Australian Janine Antoni’s gnawed chocolate and Network for Art & Technology; there lard of the early 1990s, and she conducted a series of tests about the even Comedian, Maurizio Cattelan’s different colours that people associate with Top Opposite Installation view Left to right, top to bottom banana-and-duct-tape readymade that the aroma and flavour of six Australian ELIZABETH WILLING ELIZABETH WILLING Pick-me-up, 2019 Through the Mother, 2019 caused a sensation at Art Basel Miami shiraz wines. Willing translated the results Bayside Gallery hand-carved spotted Beach in December 2019. into a series of abstract paintings, with Photo: Mark Ashkanasy gum table featuring eucalyptus, yarrow, Top left and right Few artists, however, have concentric bands of colour of varying straw flower, lavender, Installation views hydrangea and marijuana ELIZABETH WILLING demonstrated a sustained and meaningful widths and intensities representing the 120 x 120 x 70cm Pick-me-up, 2019 Photos: Simon Woods engagement with food as Elizabeth data. The supports for the paintings are The Block QUT ELIZABETH WILLING Willing has. Since graduating from the oak tables, a material traditionally used to Previous page (undisclosed ELIZABETH WILLING Queensland University of Technology make wine barrels. The tabletops can be shiraz, 2019 Pick-me-up size variable in 2009, the Brisbane-based artist has detached from their legs and hung on the (detail), 2019 consistently used food as both material wall as paintings. The tables were designed Kinder chocolates Installation view in wrappers ELIZABETH WILLING and subject for her interdisciplinary to be collapsible, like an IKEA flat pack, 320 x 85 x 5 cm Through the Mother, 2019 Photo: Mark Ashkanasy UQ Art Museum practice encompassing , drawing, reinforcing the functionality of many of Photo: Simon Woods collage, video and performance. Willing’s objects. Courtesy the artist Willing describes her interest in food Several recent projects extend and Tolarno Galleries, as being “through the mother, chef and Willing’s ongoing investigation of food by Melbourne

62 63 Bottom Opposite Sol LeWitt, although Willing ELIZABETH WILLING Top to bottom Beeswax bowls (before Installation view also made a series of incisions on lighting), served in UQ Art ELIZABETH WILLING Museum concept dinner in Endless host (no.1, 2, and 3), the inside of the table legs, based collaboration with chef Josue 2019 as part of Pith, on traditional shortbread moulds. Lopez, 2019 Caloundra Regional Gallery beeswax and wick Willing has likened her carved ELIZABETH WILLING ELIZABETH WILLING Collections cast, 2019 impressions to hieroglyphs or A Full Quarter, served in UQ framed dark and milk Art Museum concept dinner chocolate casts archaeological finds that must be in collaboration with chef 60 x 60 x 3 cm sought out, hidden from view on the Josue Lopez, 2019 Photos: Carl Warner Photos: Simon Woods inside of the table legs. Courtesy the artist and Tolarno Galleries, As well as being sculptures in their Melbourne own right, the tables served as the setting for a performance, in the form of a concept dinner presented by Willing in collaboration with local chef Chris Hagan from The Long Apron restaurant at Spicers Clovelly Estate, Montville. Willing’s concept meals are multisensory experiences, connecting the audience with artworks on display. Each course is conceived as a unique experience; the artist designs tableware, cutlery and napery, prompting participants to think about the ritual of dining. Viewed together, the concept “To activate something, dinner and Pith exhibition encourage the audience to contemplate their own relationship with the food they make it alive, useful, edible, eat, where it comes from and how their own habits impact on ephemeral, functional is for the land which produces it. Willing has adopted the term ‘hosting’ to me a feminist act.” articulate the way in which her objects are transformed through artist or audience intervention; and her concept meal performances, which are a form of hospitality. Although informed by the aesthetic of male sculptors like LeWitt, Willing’s work subverts their pure forms through interventions like the carvings in Endless Host, or the torn- foil remnants of Pick-me-up, compared to the neat candy stacks of the late Cuban artist Félix González-Torres, which are continually replenished. For Willing, the performative nature of her work makes it consciously, if not overtly, feminist. In December, she told VA U LT, “To activate something, make it alive, useful, edible, ephemeral, functional is for me a feminist act.” In February 2020, Willing will exhibit work alongside artists including Janine Antoni and Andy Warhol at the Museum Tinguely in Basel, Switzerland as part of Amuse-bouche: The Taste of Art, an acknowledgement of the artist’s rising prominence and her singular commitment to exploring the intersection of food and visual art.

Amuse Bouche. The Taste of Art opens at the Museum Tinguely, Basel, on February 19, 2020. Throughout February 2020 Willing will be Artist in Residence at the Museum of Brisbane. Elizabeth Willing is represented by Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne. tinguely.ch museumofbrisbane.com.au tolarnogalleries.com

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