Curating Multisensory and Food-Based Art
On 21 September 2022, I presented the talk “Curating Multisensory and Food-Based Art” at the Museum & Galleries of NSW’s event, SPARK: Museums. Ideas. Connections., at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This talk surveys curatorial projects staging multisensory encounters where audiences see, hear, feel, smell, and sometimes taste the artworks on show. It...
Scentual Encounters
Scents are invisible, intangible, volatile, and transient. Our olfactory register is bombarded as we navigate daily life. Nearly all the products we use on our bodies (shampoo, lotion, make-up, toothpaste) and our homes (laundry detergent, dish soap, floor cleaner) are scented. We seek to control the aromas we find undesirable; we use antiperspirant to suppress...
reminiSCENT (2018)
reminiSCENT | 25 July to 11 August 2018 | MAY SPACE, Sydney reminiSCENT surveys contemporary artists initiating multisensory experiences through olfactory encounters. Smelling is classified as a “bodily sense” in that along with touch and taste, in order to be ‘known’ or perceived, they need to be experienced with the body. Scent receptors are located...
Further Reading – 16 March 2015
+ READ: I have an article in the current issue of IMPRINT magazine. The essay is titled “Squashings, pressings, and stains: food as a medium in printmaking and works on paper” and discusses the work of Ed Ruscha, Dieter Roth, Martynka Wawrzyniak, and Elizabeth Willing. The research pertaining to the practises of Ruscha and Roth...
Sugar, Sugar (2013)
Using the beguiling substance of sugar as their medium, the ten artists of Sugar, Sugar at Brenda May Gallery in Sydney, engage notions of permanence given the transient nature of the material. With Shelley Miller’s Velocity exposed to all the elements, and slowly disintegrating, on the 2 Danks Street façade and Elizabeth Willing’s Goosebump being...
Janet Tavener – Asparagus Pie
The Sugar, Sugar exhibition will be installed at Brenda May Gallery in about three weeks and in the lead-up to the show, I will be sharing a selection of the work that will be on view. You can see Mylyn Nguyen’s carved sugar cube in the current issue of Vogue Living. This is the second...
Sugar, Sugar catalogue
The Sugar, Sugar exhibition catalogue is now available for download here. In addition to full-colour reproductions of the artworks featured in the exhibition, the catalogue features three essays about sugar in art. I wrote an essay titled Performative and Interactive Aspects of Sugar in Art, presenting the historical context of sugar in art with artworks by...
Sugar, Sugar exhibition
The artists for the upcoming exhibition Sugar, Sugar have now been finalised and the show will feature ten female artists working with sugar as their medium. The artists include Matina Bourmas, Irianna Kanellopoulou, Judith Klausner, Stephanie Jones, Claire McArdle, Shelley Miller, Mylyn Nguyen, Janet Tavener, Claire Anna Watson and Elizabeth Willing. Works range from carefully...
Art + Food: Beyond the Still Life at Brenda May Gallery
The curated group exhibition Art + Food: Beyond the Still Life at Brenda May Gallery in Sydney, considers the representation of food within the visual arts and beyond the standard still life tableaux. The consumption of food is a universally shared experience, enabling people viewing the exhibition to connect with the issues surrounding consumerism, food production...
Janet Tavener – Vanilla & Blueberry Frozen Fruit Mold
Currently on view at Brenda May Gallery is a curated group exhibition titled Art + Humour Me featuring the works of twenty Australian contemporary artists. In addition to a cardigan-wearing tree, the show includes artworks in a range of mediums from sculpture to video and naturally I was drawn to the three cast resin jelly...