April 7 – 18, 2004
Eatopia: Recent FoodWorks by Ilona Staples,
Propeller member Ilona Staples will exhibit sculpture/installation focused on food waste, eating, and the degeneration of organic matter into a state of inertia and disorganization. Included in the exhibition is an audio work on the chemical composition of an orange created with Bill Staples, poet bill bissett and musician Nicholas Longstaff. The exhibition opens Wednesday, April 7 at 6pm: Montreal performance chef Waffledude will be serving up fresh delicious waffles.
Staples FoodWorks can be viewed as contemporary interpretations of the Vanitas, a type of still life painting popularized in the 16th and 17th centuries that symbolized human mortality and the transience of earthly pleasures and achievements. Several pieces in the show question the construction of impossible ideals and the failure of mass production and consumption to create feelings of satisfaction and Utopian plenty.ย
Using food and food wastes, Staples creates abstract structures or patterns in various states of entropy or collapse that evoke the aging body or larger societal issues. Her use of materials is inspired by Georges Batailleะตs notion of the ะฒinformeะณ as elaborated by Yves-Alain Bois and Rosalind E. Krauss in their book ะฒFormless: A Userะตs Guideะณ (NYC: Zone Books, 1997).
