Feasting on Art

The 2.5 x 2.5 metre biscuit tin installation by Christine Turner is featured in the current curated exhibition Art + Food: Beyond the Still Life at Brenda May Gallery in Sydney. According to Turner, ”I have found that biscuit tins require a simple configuration when presented in artworks. Each tin provides a great deal of information of its own. Information about societal customs, the economy, consumerism and much more.” Most people, when viewing the work, circle the parameter recognising tins from their own mother’s and grandmother’s kitchens. The installation draws on people’s nostalgia for familiar things and a certain time or place. The recipe below, provided by the artist, is for an Anzac biscuit, a hard cookie made of rolled oats, coconut and golden syrup. Because of their long shelf-life, the cookies were often sent by the wives of soldiers to the men overseas; hence their name (ANZAC – Australian and New Zealand Army Corps).

Christine Turner, Lifescape, 2012, mixed media – biscuit tins,
250 x 250cm (dimensions variable), Courtesy the Artist and Brenda May Gallery, Sydney

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This post has been a long time coming. Between a few freelance writing projects and my curatorial debut, I have had very little free time left to finish this post. Plus I have managed to forget butter the last three times I went grocery shopping. Without it, these pretty madeleines would have been very sad tasting. A madeleine is a small sponge cake that hails from the northeast of France – the Lorraine region to be exact. The cakes are distinctive for their shell-like appearance and are made with a dedicated pan especially for madeleines, available at most home-ware shops.

Vincent van Gogh, Still Life with Basket and Six Oranges, 1888
oil on canvas, 45 x 54 cm, Private collection

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As far as cookie recipes go, this little beauty has become my new holiday staple. I first tried this recipe by Gourmet a couple of years ago but made too many substitutions. The cookies were extremely disappointing and I filed the card away in my recipe box until a bag of what was described as ‘the best pistachios you will ever eat’ arrived from my mother. The cookies are extremely festive, dotted with ruby red berries and dusty green nuts and extremely moorish, one is never enough. I used salted pistachios and so omitted the salt from the recipe. The salted nuts are perfectly offset with the sweet and chewy cranberries while the butter-rich dough melts in your mouth.

Albert Anker, Still Life: Two Glass of Red Wine, a bottle of Wine; a Corkscrew and a Plate of Biscuits on a Tray, oil on canvas, 43 x 40cm, Private collection

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Growing up in the Midwest, cookies played a major part of my December. Throughout the holiday season, we gathered at my grandparent’s home for various parties and meals, always entering their home via the garage and past the cookies. Perched on the woodpile, the cookies lived in old tins between layers of wax paper and were kept cold by the Michigan winter. This holiday staple, a recipe by my grandmother, produces a soft and chewy cookie with a dense crumb and can easily be scaled up or down.

John Frederick Peto, The Poor Man’s Store (detail left), 1885
oil on canvas and panel, 90 x 65cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

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Set against the slate gray skies of winter, the kitchen calls. With my hip pressed against the counter and the trusty wooden spoon I found in the back of a drawer in my first London home, I stand and stir with wafts of steam creating a makeshift heater. In the midst of the season of soup, I have swirled pots of stock until the freezer was brimming. Slowly caramelizing onions is a satisfactory substitute to soup-making; it is a long process that continues to warm the kitchen during the last of the chilly days.

De Scott Evans, A Plate of Onions, 1889
oil on canvas, 25.4 x 30.4 cm

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