1.10 The Way We Eat at AGNSW

Transcript

Alright Sydney, this is Hung Up and just guess which gallery we’re in today. Just guess. Just guess. I’ll give you two tries. Nope, that’s wrong. Nope. Try one more time. You got it wrong. Okay, we’re at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. We’re at the AG.

That’s so cool. This is so cool. So we just walked into The Way We Eat, which is a show

in the AG. And we’re standing in front of this big, like top-down view of a table at like a Chinese restaurant with all the dishes on it. And it’s like a video and one by one, everything’s kind of tipping and falling off the screen.

That’s beautiful. So I, yeah, like I came in and I was looking at this perfectly laid out the table with all the food on. And then obviously the camera is locked to the table and just like rotating so that everything’s going to slide off up and up and up and away. It’s cool. It’s kind of sliding towards heaven or something. Sliding towards the spiritual realm. It’s sliding up. Yeah, it’s all sliding up and away. Wow. Bye-bye.

This is a big show as well. So like, I don’t think we’ve ever been to such a big gallery. Like, no, not such a big and like, you know, these cultural institutions, it’s like doing more than just showing the art. It’s also like representing a city and doing like official things.

Yes, official things. That’s true. Yeah. To follow along with this multidisciplinary multimedia podcast, you can go to our Instagram at hungup.au and every time you hear this sound, we’re moving on to the next artwork.

Ooh, I like this one. I like this one a lot, dude. So we’re standing in front of like a big photo and the artist name is Hong Hao. And it’s a, um, like galaxy of like packaged sweets. There’s like a bunch that I recognize and a lot that I don’t recognize.

Um, I can see like a Kit Kat in the corner and like Mentos, but then like a million little, you know, tiny little production run sweets. This is so fun. It’s like, it’s visually sweet. It’s like, it’s, it’s so, it’s, it’s so, everything’s been lined up in a very satisfying, like a pattern. They all like sit next to each other. You know, it, there’s a lot that you could like, that you could say about this.

Like it’s, it’s got a bit of a, like, ha, ha, we’re, we’re getting fat and eating too many sweets thing about it. And it’s also like the modern world and like all the colors of the modern world and the, the, like the, really respecting the beauty and packaging. packaging. Yes. And the just the colors of the packaging and the form and you know the shapes.

These are all obviously purchased from the same country I think. You can see like also the kind of this could also be like a cool representation of like in the in the sort of commercial food world like how much the west has infiltrated and like if it is it’s kind of cool to see how little it is. There’s like a few brands that are recognized but they’re in the vast minority like

most of it would be locally produced sweets. Yep. What’s the thing like the like local tastes are so kind of powerful. I mean certain things do get everywhere but there’s always like a take on it like the fucking Macca’s wherever you go. Yeah right. Yeah it’s got its own local flavor. Yeah you can’t

like no matter what like globalization you can’t ever quite like snuff out the fucking deep you know from birth. Yeah. You know palette. Yeah that’s a really good point. So yeah there’s a kind of like suggestion of like you were saying and in the like artist card about this being like you know taking a shot at like overindulgence but I’m not really feeling that from looking at the work. Yeah. Like

I don’t feel any kind of like disgust or anything. Yeah that’s true. Like it just looks really beautiful to me and like what you were saying about like a like a color palette for like a contemporary world but I also think like uh I don’t know it doesn’t feel that overwhelming to me maybe because of the way it’s like lit up and like the the border like this like you know heavy kind of black border like

very museum. Yeah. Um. Sure it is very museum. There’s nothing to me like disgusting or like over consumptive about the image. Yeah. It’s not like creating that for me. It’s not beating us around the head about it. Yeah. It is it is like you know you want you can’t help but be aware of all the

options that are available. But I feel more overwhelmed just like going into a fucking like Asian grocer. You know what I mean? Yeah it’s being well I mean like but okay you haven’t had to choose a suite yet. You know what I mean? Like when you go to a grocer you like have something in mind right? Sure. But like here we’re just looking. We just ate so we’re not that hungry. But I have a feeling

we’re going to leave this show being very hungry. Well none of us like sweets because we’re serious. We’re serious adults. We’re too serious to eat sugar. But people really love the sweets. That’s cool. The sweets are banging. The sweets are absolutely banging. It is actually nice for ones to come to a gallery and like see other people like looking at the work and engaging with the work. True and like enjoying the work. Yeah. We’ve seen a couple

of people like race through and we’re um doing these. Oh all right. So this is a serious

series of five works by this artist Patty Chang and like a lot of these artists are like you know very established. So she was like born in the 70s. Actually I don’t even know if that’s relevant but uh take us away on a descriptive. It’s relevant to me. Okay. Well these are like they’re just these really kind of like anyway there’s some combo of plastic and glass and so

it’s like you know this hand-blown glass and then you know at various places which we can’t you can’t quite tell like because the materials are quite similar visually. You know there’s plastic just like real plastic bottles. Yeah it raises for me this question about like um like I like I like

that they’re hard to discern just for the like reading because it’s like um the the sort of the like eco-friendly and the eco-violent. Yeah. Like can sometimes be the other and and are so um hard to detect. And actually that is because of the industry the scale of the industry that can produce

that type of plastic let’s say. Yeah I feel like there’s all these like crappy environmental gotchas which just like yeah it’s just a shame because like people trying to do the right thing and then someone’s like well actually do you know that your keep cup is worse than like 10 years of me with my water bottle. It’s like fuck off. So we were on the way over here we walked past um the QVB and at the

front there was just this solitary student like sitting cross-legged looking mournfully at the passers-by and her sign said climate emergency and it was just one person and I was like fuck. It’s fucking that’s what we’re up to right now. Nearly the end of holidays and she’s it’s like the last day of holidays dude and she’s like sitting on the ground pretty cool. But these are awesome like they are awesome. I think they’re the like cheapest looking objects in this show. I guess. Yeah. You

know what I mean like they’re the roughest looking objects. Sure. Sure. Everything else is like pretty polished. Yeah I can see like sticky tape holding two of these together. You can see sticky tape. We can see like uh like this brilliant bright like watermelon flavored whatever like label and like nothing else in this show quite has like you know rubbish in it. Mm. Mm. True. Everything’s kind of been like um distilled down. Yeah. Totally. Which is kind of classic of this gallery. Yeah.

But I really really I love these and I love that they’re in these big like badass like glass cases. Yeah. And they’re sitting on these like darkened mirrors as well. They’ve really been given like a kind of uh I don’t know it’s just funny there’s this real like conflict between the presentation and the actual matter.

The actual matter. Yeah. Yeah. I suppose yeah it’s these are the odd ones out in this show. Yes. For sure. Especially in this room like you know nice floors and like nice lights and everything’s very like you know. Everything’s very art gallery but these are like crumpled up and like fucked up. It almost like raises them up right like it makes you look at them through a lens. See that is glass. That definitely is glass.

Both of these are glass. Maybe. Like it doesn’t matter. Actually do you know what? I don’t care about your reading. My reading’s sick. Your reading’s sick. It’s interesting also that like you know all of the everything we’ve seen does have a pretty like political lean. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Like just necessarily.

Even even if it’s like only in terms of like east versus west. Like that work standing that you’re standing in front of like just behind you is the 40 pieces of cutlery versus like one pair of chopsticks. This is like this is doing that but it’s more like art versus industry or something.

I love like this one especially like for some kind of this long one. I’m not sure what it reminds me of. Some other kind of glass. It was like an elaborate bong. Yeah. That’s kind of where I was thinking. That’s what I was thinking. But in a cool way like we’re not you know we’re we’re not knocking bongs nor are we knocking Paddy Chang’s work by saying that. So yeah basically this one is like you know the like the top like.

Yeah. These are like like playful arrangements of like what what looked like rubbish you know at the first. Which would have been like quite a successful work in its own right. Sure. But but going through the like obviously painstaking and very skillful like process of like blowing them from glass just for this.

Yeah. Really like it sort of underlines and like and makes the point shine through all the more I think. Oh 100%. This is really like clever like powerful shit. I love this one. It’s got like three water bottles that could be plastic or glass kind of like bursting out of each other like a multi-headed fucking snake.

Like a creature. Yeah. It looks like a creature. Yeah. It’s sick. And it’s cool. They’ve kind of been described I don’t really know how as like urinary devices. Yeah. They’re like you drink water in one like you drink this makes me to pee and then you pee back into it. Yeah. Like this endless cycle of like consumption and ablution. Yeah. Piss and drink. Piss and drink. Piss and drink. It fits with that quote that like a human being is a bag to put food in.

Yeah. Right. Sometimes it feels like that huh. Yes. I’m like fuck. I’ve got to eat again. Yeah. Yeah. It is absurd. It is totally absurd. What else do you like about these? Um hmm. We were talking last week. What were we talking last week? I was just editing the most recent episode and we we touched on this thing about like

um we were looking at some works that I was calling like naive and I thought it was kind of a fair way. And um and what you said um and we kind of cut away from this a little bit but like what you said you said you said something about like um the it being a dangerous like path to go down because um let’s just stand over here so that people can actually look at it um because

it’s like uh what do you remember what you said about that? So it’s basically saying like um you know so like for instance right there’s this really like beautiful piece of like 18th century ceramics like this is the plate and I’m imagining like the plate we saw on the wall there. Yeah. And this one is like so it’s the complete opposite.

Sure. And I’m saying by having such like you know craftsmanship inside your materials in a way that’s safer because people are just going to like instantly kind of respect and get it. Cool. So that’s the flip side of of what you said which was that like taking this path of like naive in air quotes is dangerous like because if people don’t in air quotes get it then it’s

like they might hate your work you know. And that’s what I like about the water bottles is that it’s it it may not be dangerous in that sense of like playing naive. Yeah. At the risk of me like maybe hating it but um it it definitely is like a work of of a master

glass artist but they’ve they’ve sort of like they’re not blowing like elaborate dragons with frilly wings you know they’re blowing like crap from the side of the road which is which is also for defecating into they’re saying like. Yeah I mean I love this work like I really love it so much and like for me like I’m thinking

Brandon Van Heck like master glass blower but making these really like elegant you know objects that can fit right into a fucking posh ass house. Yeah. Like you’ve got to be really fucking cool to have one of these in your house. Oh yeah. You know what I mean? And like put them on the plinth. Yeah. So I do still think like anytime you start working with materials that are so kind of

like coarse and jagged I mean not to say like glass or plastic is maybe plastic is but the way like a lot of these like so one end of each of these works or sometimes both ends has like you know a hole for you to piss into and in a couple cases it’s just like a big smash smash like a big broken gaping thing you probably wouldn’t want to stick anything anywhere near

there. Yeah true. But it’s kind of like yeah violence and I guess the thing too that turns me on about them so much especially the way they’re displayed they’re just laying on these tables it’s like yeah dude we totally just walked past like a crushed Gatorade bottle like on the way here. Yeah. And like to kind of bring that into this context and then you know be able to create all this

like feeling and like political statement like that’s when art really like sings to me. Great. And it’s it’s also like bringing together these disparate topics like all like not actually disparate it’s bringing together these three topics that like we all feel so much every day

there’s like the world of the art and the craft in the like glassware there’s the world of like industry and consumption in the plastic bottles and then there’s like the body and like your personal self and your safety and the like the needing to pee and like yeah that that like sort of tragic thing of like I need to pee and I can’t like you know how many movies have you seen there’s like a scene where like the kid like wets his pants because he can’t

find a toilet or whatever you know like that sort of tragic like heartstring like very personal bodily thing. Totally. We fucking love these works. Yeah so cool. Tape on a work it’s like a way to Aiden’s heart. Yeah. Throw some sticky tape on it and I’m like shit. Shit. You got me again. Shit.

I also really like the way that overhead lights are making it like look we’re kind of like bickering back and forth like that one’s plastic no that one’s glass because it like brings to light like an interesting similarity between those two really disparate materials that like in a certain context you can’t really tell which is which. Yes.

So we’re now standing in front of this work by the artist Liu Xiaoxian called The Way We Eat which is the title of oh okay there’s also a guided tour going as well. Let’s let the pros take over from now. Over to you sir. The Way We Eat our curator. You want to hear what he says or nah.

He came up like what the fuck that’s my job. Yeah. So now we’re standing in front of this big like sort of lacquered collage by the Luo brothers and it it’s got all these like really cool sort of resonances for me. The first thing I’m thinking of is you go to a restaurant and this is the table like wouldn’t

that be cool like and and you’ve seen restaurants before where like the menus lacquered into the table. Yeah. Or like they have their brand or something. Yeah. And this one is this like like triumphant scene of this like little propaganda baby like riding in on a tiger. This gorgeous tiger. Yeah. And there’s like TVs and karaoke microphones and like Sony batteries and I can see a printer

and a bottle of coke and like the babies are so cute. And there’s just all these like these very healthy happy looking little babies with like very traditional cute haircuts and like you know stuff like a fucking Rolex and shit like Yeah they’re all like really happily like holding consumer goods. Yeah. Like this one baby is like wearing this like awesome tiger bib and riding a tiger and then

like swinging a fucking bottle of like a glass bottle of coke like a baseball bat. I want a bottle of coke now. It looks so good. Yeah it looks really tasty. We’re just probably still thirsty. Oh cool. So there’s like a pot like a pretty traditional looking like urn or something and it’s just been stuffed full of like 90s like gear.

Tech goods. Yeah. Nokia. A little Discman. Nokia 33010. Cool. Fucking soccer ball. A nice printer. And the backdrop of course is this like big radiant rising sun kind of like motif with like that also again on the Gold Star branded TV.

It’s got such a sexy like such a kind of yeah like ad like old ad. Yeah. Kind of like what do you call it. It’s got like it’s got almost like a nationalistic propaganda kind of flavor to it like with the rising sun thing and like the happy healthy babies like how well we’re doing you know. Yeah. But maybe despite despite something or like the question raised to me is like despite what

or like in spite of what or like what what what kind of like world are you living in when you see this kind of flavor of ad. Yes. Totally. And the other thing is just the the physical like texture of this work. It’s so good how like around the outside of each of these very carefully cut out prints

you can see it’s sort of raising a bubble in the like lacquer. Yes. And like fuck they’ve done such a good job of cutting these out. Yeah the lacquer is gorgeous. This is really maybe the first collage that’s ever spoken to me so loudly. Yeah. It’s cool. It’s got that like like what do you call it like the fucking shitty Photoshop energy of like these babies have had like nice sweet things like taken out and like replaced

with consumer goods. It’s like they’re holding like a painting that they made for their mom and then they take it out and like shoved a microphone in it. So good. There’s there’s a lot of like sort of like probably specific cultural resonances that we’re like that we can get as well. Like for example like this TV and they’re like so underneath this big roaring tiger like

the main tiger this TV has got like a sort of big Mao Zedong shrine and like maybe a national parade kind of thing going on like the TV being the like sort of weapon of the state you could say for like propaganda purposes. And then this like poster is sort of like jumping over it like this baby is riding this

tiger that’s like about to knock the TV over like flat on its face. Fuck. Imagine living with this. I would this would be just the most fun artwork to live with. Yeah totally. You just eventually become enlightened. You eventually become like a really good socialist. I think I would become a better cook if I was like serving people meals under this every night. Yeah.

Okay. And finally here we are at the end of the day. What a long day it’s been. Boy. This was meant to be quick. I know this was meant to be quick. It’s now been like four hours since we met up. I’m so tired of standing next to this guy. Come on. Okay. Here we are with the like the work which the exhibition is named after right.

The Way We Eat by Liu Xiaoxian and it’s like 40 pieces of ceramic cutlery in that beautiful jade color. They’re all sorted from like biggest to smallest like you see on those intimidating table settings. And then there’s like all of these and then a break of about a meter and then this beautiful

pair of chopsticks and that’s it. Yeah. It was a very like very clever sort of gestural like poking fun at thing and also just like a really fun exploration of all these different forms and shapes and like ornate sort of fiddly fiddly stuff. Yeah. It’s funny because we were saying before when we first saw it like it’s got that like sort

of opposition of like see how these silly westerners eat and then see how we eat. Yeah. But also there is like a real appreciation for the frilly French like table setting. You know like the artist has like gone through every single little iteration of this like sort of fantasy world of what are they called? Cutlery. Yeah.

With like real like sensitive eye for detail and like care about it which is kind of a cool flip to that. Yeah. Like any good art it’s always doing like we so often find it’s also like like pulling in a couple different directions and just maintaining that tension. Yeah. And like one of the things that we don’t like about bad art is it’s like you were saying

like it holds your hand or it’s just like screams in your face. Yeah. It’s like nature is dying. Yeah. Like you’re bad. You’re bad. Yeah. Exactly. You’re fat. Yeah. Whereas like a bunch of this work like is kind of saying you’re fat but it’s also making like a thousand other complex concessions. Yeah. Which make you feel like you’re you know engaging in this conversation in a real way like you

might with like your friend. Yeah. You’re not just fucking you know seeing some dumb meme. Yeah. Exactly. It just gives you like a hit of dopamine like yes I’m good. Yeah. I’m good. You’re bad. You’re bad. Yeah. And then these chopsticks look like bigger than normal. They look like big chunky chopsticks. They almost look like we were saying they’re like serving chopsticks or like for cooking.

I can be a bit stupid to eat some rice with these. Yes. But in like the same way like you’re saying there’s this easy thing to draw with like haha look at these like overindulgent Europeans we just need one utensil. But these are like a very fine chopstick as well. Yes. Like it’s been given the same I think it’s like porcelain. You know it’s not to say like there’s not just a pair of wooden chopsticks at the end.

Yeah. Yeah. Obviously levels to this chopstick shit. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. It’s like a cobalt glaze or whatever. And they are like reminiscent of those like sort of takeaway shop like plastic chopsticks that you get. True. Or maybe you have to buy them by a hundred. You mean like the kind of heavy ones.

They’re sort of they’re made out of like melamine I think. Yes. It’s like a thick plastic. Yeah. Yeah. And they’re beige. Like they’ve got the same sort of essential design as that but they’re a bit more sort of elegant. And I think these have like curved a little bit in the oven that they like set in. Which is pretty funny. That’s cool. Yeah. Looks a bit like a noodle. Yeah. It’s a bit like a little bit how’s it going. I want to say like one thing about the audio tour that was just going on.

Like the guy was probably in here for like 10 minutes all told. And like he I mean maybe he’s he like showed them everything. But like the glass bottle stuff is that got like the quickest treatment. Because he was very much focused on like giving you historical detail and telling you how things were made. And I think that’s one of the things that I don’t know.

It’s the safest place to experience art. Yeah. Like just the details. Yeah. But there’s not really any room on that tour to like feel anything. That is so true. Which is why I hate well I don’t hate museums but why I find them boring. Yeah. Is it’s like details whereas like I want to like feel something about the work. But the tour is like nah this isn’t a place for feeling.

This is like info and materials. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. We would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which this episode was recorded and pay our respects to their elders past and present. We extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples listening today. You can find us on Instagram at hungup.au.

Thanks. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Show notes

EPISODE 10 🍽🍬🥢👶 This week our first choice was bad, so instead we went to the freaking @artgalleryofnsw to see The Way We Eat. We talked about propaganda babies, forks v chopsticks, piss bottles and sweets. You can follow us on instagram @hungup.au to follow along with the pictures from this show Thanks for listening! ❤️