During the writing of my dissertation, I was researching women pop artists of the 60’s, all of which were completely trodden on by their male counterparts (a different conversation) and found that a lot of their work included “female dominated” materials and practices; fabric, stitching, rug making, crafting, etc. these practices were/are often overlooked by critics and other artists as not refined enough or as sophisticated to be considered real art. I thought “Is this the actual case or is just that it is a “female dominated” area and most of the art world is misogynist?”. I regularly felt an internal struggle of this is not “fine art enough” because my work doesn’t necessarily tick the classic boxes, my work can be vulgar, loud and kitschy because it reflects my experiences and what I enjoy visually, no shame in that. So, with that I began to turn the direction of my practice into focusing on the homemaker.

Lockdown Recipes is a reflection of my experiences during the first few months of the pandemic. Being in a solely domestic space meant i naturally explored the more “traditional feminine” roles I had often picked fun at and slightly resented. I began to embrace it; with baking, organising, cleaning and crafting. After scanning through some questionable 60’s & 70’s cookbooks (did you know there is a whole book dedicated just to cooking eggs?) inherited from my Granny, i created my own “adventurous” recipes that will eventually become a book of its own.
Creating dinner sets, cutlery and utensils and food out of perishables and inedible materials such as wax and silicone demonstrates the time and effort going into these labour intensive tasks, whilst also making them entirely pointless and unusable.
I focused on the rituals of cooking and setting up a dinner table, i.e decor, colour schemes etc. which birthed this colourful and disgusting display…

So Bon Appetite.