Artists Sarah Forrest and Virginia Hutchison (In the Shadow of the Hand) have been in residence at Deveron Projects since September 2022, hosting a monthly film club that shares artists' films over food typically eaten in front of the TV, as part of their project TV Dinners. In these events, the artists set out to explore what it means to be social through 1/ conversation and 2/ thinking about objects with other people, including processes of making clootie dumplings and haggis; aluminium chip trays and camera-less films.
This month's TV Dinners was a little different!
Over the last few months of film clubs, food and its connection to socialising has emerged as an important part of the project and for this month's TV Dinners, we will be focusing on this relationship – intricately weaving together food with conversation and film around the dinner table. Artists in residence Sarah Forrest and Virginia Hutchison have invited producer Luke Collins and artist chef Kawther Luay (The Gathering Table) to co-curate and produce this month's event; designing and cooking an immersive meal that often included intimate participation and collaboration between guests (and hosts), blurring where the eating ends and the film begins…
This month, the artists screened 'Head' by Cheryl Donegan (3min, 2011) and 'Our Daily Bread' (1h30mins, 2005) by Nikolaus Geyrhalter. The event begun with artist chef Kawther Luay sharing a series of small dishes that present slowness as an idea and approach to preparing and sharing food. This was followed by a short break before screening 'Our Daily Bread' (2005), a documentary that traces the unsettling ways in which food is prepared. At 3.30pm, Luke Collins shared some readings alongside 'Head', over an oversized sweet for dessert, bringing to the table a chance to explore our bodily and sensual relationship to food.
'Our Daily Bread' takes a macro view of the food system and the humans, plants and animals that compose it. Luke's response to the film and to the TV Dinners project zooms in on the individual human body, bringing together works that explore our bodily and sensual relationship to food. Food as a material and food as a metaphor. The body as a site where power, politics and pleasure are intertwined.
This month's event featured films that some viewers may find challenging or distressing. This included imagery that could be interpreted as sensual / sexual, and imagery of the industrial food system, including livestock farming. The meal included participatory elements around food and eating which engages with these topics.
