extreme baking

somewhere online, i read the instruction to do some extreme baking - it was probably a horoscope for a friend. anyway, i decided to get reaquainted with my red food dye corn flour paste in preparation for a window space project i'm hoping for. it was so much fun 'cooking' again and i remembered how many similarities there are between painting and cooking. Well, at least there is for me. My first painting lecturer, Kevin Molloy, who taught us how to paint in oils, often used the analogy of dairy for the different forms of oil paint and the various materials one uses.

The cracks are starting to show

I've been testing this 'paint' on a bit of board in the hope that it will chip and flake exactly how i'd like it to, becoming a time-based work and a bit of a conversation about the state of decay in life cycles, the destruction of the body and mind over time and possibly a tongue in cheek pointer to 'the death of painting' - although i don't really believe painting is dead - just the boys club of modernist painting is dead.

the other thing i discovered is that this concoction of mine has solved my problem with dissolving sugar cubes. after watching the video work by at the Biennale in Campbelltown, i realised how important the bowl of sugar cubes is in the vernacular of tea rituals especially in the middle east and baltic states. there's the samovar and the bowl of sugar cubes and whether one stirs them in or sucks the tea through them, they're an important element in the process.



in wanting to do a piece with them, i wanted to make them red, my own signifier, but sugar is water soluble and these chunky, sharp and defined modern objects dissintegrated with simple food dye. enter corn flour paste. i now have the beginnings of a collection of red sugar cube objects sitting in my fridge, waiting for the next installment. part of me wants to serve tea with them and have your warm winter drink become a bloody mess without being in any way harmful! lol! keep an eye out for them in the future - i'm looking forward to continuing this extreme baking.