With more than 1000 performances during Brisbane Festival, including a series of blockbusters, it’s easy to overlook the smaller more innovative productions. And yet they are often the beating heart of the program.
Or, in the case of Metro Arts – the renowned melting pot that supports smaller more edgy works – this beating heart is more like a room-size stomach with audience members invited inside to take part in a captivating feast for the senses.
One of Metro Arts’ Brisbane Festival offerings is Kitchen Studio, created by Brisbane artist Elizabeth Willing. For more than 15 years Willing has explored the intersection of food, art and storytelling by taking her audiences on a sensory journey.
Inspired by restaurant culture and the human gut, Willing’s large-scale immersive artwork in the Metro Arts Gallery encourages guests to form new perspectives on the modern diet by exploring, engaging and experiencing edible materials.
“This project is very much using food as a material. We’re serving tastes of food to people as part of a performance that will feel a bit like a meal,” she says. “But it’s definitely not the kind of meal you would have in a restaurant. It’s a conceptually driven meal of five courses and it takes place in an installation.
“The space was inspired by the gut and the intestine. What I want is for people to come through the door and be enveloped by these villi – the curtains – to feel like they’re walking through an intestine and then down into a gut and to be hosted by the stomach. So, the work is about what we eat, how we eat, and it asks the question: what is food?”
Willing has worked for a long time with food as her main artistic material, creating conceptually driven meals served as part of her immersive performances. Her Brisbane Festival show is the culmination of years of honing her vision of bringing food and performance to a cohesive whole.
“This is the first time I’ve been able to create bringing the two together, the performative tasting elements with the installation,” she says. “So that’s really exciting.
“I’ve had several collaborators on the project. Dirk Yates from Speculative Architecture created the design for the space. It had to be divided into a kitchen and a dining space. He very cleverly used the main window of the gallery, too, as a lens so that people can look in and see the working space behind the scenes. And then there’s a much more intimate space towards the back, which is more isolated, and that’s where the performance will happen. People will be sitting and engaging in this one-hour hosted event.”
Her installation has taken over the exhibition space at Metro Arts Gallery, which the public is free to explore when there isn’t a performance.
Willing is thrilled that Brisbane Festival has provided the opportunity to show her work to a wider audience. Metro Arts will also host two other shows:
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Adrift from Counterpilot is an interactive adventure using innovative technology that blurs the boundaries between reality and imagination. Audiences will play a pivotal role in shaping stories about the ocean as they navigate a world of mystery and intrigue.
Oliver Hetherington-Page will also present The No Bang Theory for a short season at New Benner Theatre, bringing his hilarious and honest take on life and love on the autism spectrum.
Kitchen Studio continues at Metro Arts Gallery until October 26; The No Bang Theory plays Metro Arts’ New Benner Theatre, September 4-7; Adrift plays Metro Arts’ New Benner Theatre, September 11-28; metroarts.com.au
brisbanefestival.com.au
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