Emma Jane Whitton’s domestic edibles
An installation within a domestic setting plays with notions of the vulnerable and uncanny.




fig.i



With recessed spaces either side of the domestic fireplace bulging with a sculptural montage of organic-looking matter, the walls look alive. In the semi-dilapidated shell of a suburban home, the artistic intervention is camouflaged against the stripped back decayed fabric of the space, blurring the line between the artistic acts and those of damp, decay, or de-decoration of the space in preparation for its next reimagining.

A digital print Mortadella montage (2016) hangs from a wall which itself carries the same pockmarked aesthetic after the stripping of wallpapers. A cactus sits to the side, the pot its in with a surface made of cast salami, and next to it on the side table a plaster cast of a petrified sandwich.

Everything seems edible, or regurgitated, or at some stage of a process between. Whitton says she was considering the home as a body, “and the exposed structure of the space an opportunity to make abstract and uncanny connections to the softness and vulnerability of the building."



figs.ii-v


It is that duality of the two encasements of the self - architecture and body - which Whitton seeks to explore, both with skins which index “personal and intimate experiences”. The artist has a curiosity with foodstuffs, both how an individual psychologically perceives well as ingests it, and the cultural objectness of food is tested in her work, by transforming the organic into a frozen cast. Then other materials are imbued with a sense of the organic, resulting in a hovering between life and imitation, edible and ornamental.

The installation was exhibited as part of the 2019 group exhibition, Strange At The House: A Group Show Exploring the Domestic Uncanny, which Whitton co-curated alongside Mollie Tearne.










artist website

www.emmajanewhitton.co.uk

images

fig.i Untitled Installation, Strange At The House, 2019, 1.2m x 2.4m each panel, Jesmonite, foam, living plants, cables, mortadella. © Emma Jane Whitton.
fig.ii-v Details of installed, cast panels.© Emma Jane Whitton.
fig.vi Mortadella montage, 2016, Digital Print, 105cm x 85 cm. Salami Plant pot, 2019, Jesmonite casting,  25cm x 30 cm. Petrified Sandwich, 2019, plaster casting, 20cm x 12cm. © Emma Jane Whitton.

publication date
11 January 2022

tag
Artwork, Domestic, Food, House, Sculpture, Emma Jane Whitton