The lead title and touch-stone for this entry comes thanks to the inspiring and acclaimed chef and writer, Jennifer McLagan. I have her book, 'Odd Bits' (2011) poised open on a stand in my room, as constant presence and reminder to keep researching, reading and referencing the historical and cultural aspects of eating offal - which she documents so well - and of course in terms of recipes, from the traditional and stoic to the obscure and contemporary.
A little way into the book, a double page spread opens and introduces the question: 'Odd bits as art?' My own background, academically, personally and career-wise up until 7 months ago was strongly anchored in the art and creative industries. This time last year I was selling fine art, and before that had worked across brand development, interior design and architecture, artist consultancy and marketing within those same industries and with other galleries. A lot of people continue to comment on what an apparently drastic transition it was that I've taken, from selling fine art to being a butcher and looking to make something of out offal. I, of course, have some immediate bias towards the point, but actually I've always felt that it was more of an evolution out of what I was already doing, and that there were lots of transferrable means of thinking and taking enjoyment in this new venture.
I will always try and make a point about butchery really being an art form in itself, at the very least to be considered a genuine 'craft'. There is a sense of creativity and artfulness in its practice, and I can find fulfilment in that in much the same way as I would something else that is both manual and conceptual. An oil painter must come to understand how oil paint behaves and reacts to different conditions, and who must develop a dexterity with the paintbrush in their hand and on a canvas or board, in butchery there is a natural need to know the animal's anatomy and how the meat, fat and bones lie, wield a variety of different knives according to specific parts of the animal, in order to achieve specific results. Butchery is deconstruction and reconstruction, it includes perception and resourcefulness, which is how we might think about the work and process of other artistic endeavours.
Another point I always like making about offal is the genuine beauty of organs and insides, and the fascination that comes with anatomy. Looking at offal either as biological matter or as food so literally and directly is for many overtly disgusting and disturbing - it's an immediate trigger to the deeply uncomfortable empathy factor of the meat we eat looking like us - having a heart and a liver and kidneys just as we do, and we're reminded to question our acceptance of then killing and eating said-animal. Conversely, while this is important to address, I would encourage others to look even deeper and more singularly at an offal product in order to just understand it in and of itself. There is so much beauty - aesthetically, literally and conceptually - in the complexities and intricacies of a heart, or in the depth and richness in the colour and body of a whole liver. Fresh, cleaned, and in and of themselves, these are extraordinary and very real symbols of life, not death.
Here, I'm furthering the ideas, works and practices noted by McLagan on three artists whose work incorporates 'odd bits' to deliver really powerful messages and visuals, both literally and metaphorically.
VICTORIA REYNOLDS
Reynolds' paintings are incredibly striking and unapologetic. Deceptively ornate and emulating the canonical traditions and genres of painting; the Dutch and Flemish Masters of still life, with Baroque and Rococo aesthetics both in terms of the artwork itself and the framing, we are first overwhelmed by the intricacy and richness of colour and texture. The realisation of the subject matter, however, is a playful and indeed, for many, grotesque contradiction - Reynolds' muse is raw flesh, meat, sinews and organs - 'odd bits'.
Victoria Reynolds, 'Flight of the Reindeer', (2003), oil on panel, frame. (https://hammer.ucla.edu/programs-events/2009/03/artist-talk-victoria-reynolds)
Much of the reception and critical analysis of Reynolds' works refer to this essential dichotomy of being simultaneously beautiful and repulsive - 'unabashedly sumptuous and sensual' - provoking feelings of both awe and awfulness. I would argue it's important for us to deliberately encounter such contrasts, whether as a creative or recreational exercise, or perhaps significantly here, in terms of how we look at and relate to bodies, raw meat and flesh - and, for Floffal's case, how we then understand what it is to consume. In Flight of the Reindeer, what appears to be abstracted raw lungs is designed like cascading luxurious, silky gowns or billowing reams of fabric. There's something of the 'epic' narrative and mythical extravagance in the dynamism her works, echoing depictions of such tales and religious subjects by the Renaissance painters, like Titian and Michelangelo. Reynolds' paintings of tripe, one type of which she notes is in fact called 'Biblical' because of the ways it falls open in opaque papery layers, like the pages in a bible. That the artist treats a traditionally vulgar subject through the traditionally most venerable techniques and styles in painting is, I think, very clever and very entertaining.
Victoria Reynolds, 'Fat of the Lamb' (2003), oil on panel, frame. (https://hammer.ucla.edu/programs-events/2009/03/artist-talk-victoria-reynolds)
Reynolds delivered a fantastic talk to an audience at The Hammer Museum in 2009. You can listen and watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFnPiIFyNw0
PINAR YOLAÇAN
Turkish-born artist and photographer Pinar Yolaçan has devised another material technique of deception, both practically and conceptually in employing offal as one of her artistic media.
Yolaçan's series, 'Perishables' I love the composition and layering of independent component parts of life - the organs - against a composite whole life - the living model.
Pinar Yolaçan, 'Untitled' (2001), C-print. (https://www.saatchigallery.com/artist/pinar_yolacan)
Accompanying text for this series produced by William A Ewing for Saatchi Gallery notes the 'profound question' these works generate: 'the confused and contradictory relationship we have with the animal kingdom.' Ewing references how 'Claude Lévi-Strauss famously proposed ‘the raw and the cooked’ as symbolic equivalents to nature and culture, noting that of all the animal species only humans cook food. But Yolaçan reminds us of a simpler truth: we are what we eat.' This really is a huge factor which I think comes into play in terms of offal - it being such a stark and literal reminder of death and a living thing, and of its similarity to us.
Pinar Yolaçan, From 'Maria' Series. (https://lenscratch.com/2012/01/pinar-yolacan/)
The artist herself, more poetically, describes as "our more internal, hidden part" that she is looking to exhibit. I think she does this powerfully, but with a genuine delicacy. She sourced and sewed each 'garment' entirely herself, and it is a very curious and wonderful paradox to see pieces of tripe lacing and draping upon these stoic female models' bodies, with connotations of a beautiful, artisan tradition of hand-sewing lace, which has always been a sign of genuine craft and prowess in textiles, and represented cultural identity. I think meat within food can do the same thing, and the 'craft' of butchery similarly is something I personally try and encourage people to view.
The artist talks about establishing an intimacy with strangers as a thread throughout her art practice - the 'strange' and the 'weird' is actually something to be embraced, appreciated, and in some ways synchronised again alongside us. Again, however striking or uncomfortable at first, re-homogenising parts and processes of our food and meat in particular is actually something quite natural and cohesive if we're willing to accept some real truths and explore possibilities through them.
JULIA LOHMANN
Lohmann's online biography describes how she 'investigates and critiques the ethical and material value systems underpinning our relationship with flora and fauna.' As a child, she'd wanted to be a vet, and so her work is inspired from this historic interest and care for animal welfare.
Lohmann designed and produced 'benches' in the shape of headless reclining cows, clad in leather - another literal paradox and synchronicity of subject, object, material, and concept - presented as 'Cow benches or bovine memento mori'. One of the pieces from this series is in fact held in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York.
'Flock' (below) was an extraordinary installation piece noted in McLagan's book - 'a ceiling of fifty lights, each light encased in a preserved sheep's stomach.' The installation measured 180cm x 180cm x 30cm, and was exhibited in London's Royal College of Art Summer Show, where the artist had been a student, and at Design Mart in the Design Museum.
Julia Lohmann, 'Flock', 2004 (https://www.julialohmann.co.uk/work/gallery/flock/)
Julia Lohmann, 'Flock', 2004 (https://www.julialohmann.co.uk/work/gallery/flock/)
To me, there is a strangely calming effect, and a softness and ethereality to how the installation appears. I can't speak for the experience of actually encountering it, but it is a clearly a warm, muted light from the lamps encase by the dried stomachs. It is a very abstract and even playful reference to a sheep and its wool, which itself has somewhat innocent, even childhood connotations that some would feel is uncomfortable but is in fact simply taking directly from nature and elevating it.
There is a strong design and architectural element to Lohmann's work. As she describes of her approach, "we need an empathic, more than human-centric way of engaging with nature." (https://www.biennaleofsydney.art/participants/julia-lohmann/) Again, empathy is a complex and very sensitive thing to engage with when it comes to consuming meat. Most of the time, people would rather remove themselves from any such relation to dead animals or their carcasses and the idea that their food is excavated from them. Lohmann focusses on a foundational 'utility' and 'usefulness' in each of the design items and furniture she creates, so there is a combination of high art with purpose, much in the same way we could view a lot of food and culinary endeavours today.
That there is so much scope for realism and abstraction all together in these artists works and what they are able to represent, speaks truth and in volumes of the fact that meat, offal and our relationship with it is something deep and inherent, and to be nurtured more than to be dismissed. There is so much to simply enjoy and wonder at about it, and making it 'art' in particular is a helpful and inspiring vehicle for us to re-connect and re-enliven this relationship in a more positive light.
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