Elisa Barczak
Salad Days Are Gone
“I take the clay and squeeze it, steps one, two, three, just like Betty Crocker. Then I cook it, and for how long.”
Junk food, once considered high in the hierarchy of foods for its convenience and associations with modernity, now sits at the bottom, dismissed for its unhealthiness. It can instil a sense of comfort or guilt, and occasionally nostalgia, being fondly remembered from childhood, but we deny ourselves its pleasures as adults. As a medium, clay's position has also fluctuated in the art hierarchy. It has moments of popularity, but ultimately draws closer connotations to craft than art. In a way, clay started as a guilty pleasure for me, and slowly became my main practice.
Everything here has been handmade, not moulded, to contrast the mass-manufacturing of these types of food, but repetition is used at the same time to allude to that very mass-manufactured quality. I am influenced by Pop Art, specifically the paintings of Wayne Thiebaud and the sculptures of Claes Oldenburg. In their work and my own, food is metaphorically representative of consumerism in general. The bright, artificial colours are reminiscent of advertising, making it both appealing and repulsive as a food item.
In parallel to Betty Woodman, ceramics acts as a three-dimensional painting, using the table as a frame for the objects to sit upon. The table references classic still life paintings, and the idea of illusion is enforced through consistent use of the same material and attention to detail. The line between the representation and the real blurs together into one.
The objects are tangible and tempting; I have observed many people touching, sorting and arranging them to confirm their materiality.
