Such a question is open to interpretation, and what better way to demonstrate this than with a contemporary art exhibition. From Thursday, Feyza Yazar of the Hawthorn Town Hall Gallery, is curating Gluttony and the Gourmand, a month-long display that critiques contemporary food culture in Melbourne. The idea for the exhibition began to marinate in Feyza’s mind after the national election debate was moved to a different time slot so that it didn’t clash with Adam Liaw being crowned MasterChef 2010. “I found it to be quite perplexing, that politics and the whole idea of public health and education became quite secondary because people wanted to watch that grand finale,” muses Feyza.
Although Feyza has been toying with the idea of a food-focused exhibition since the beginning of this year, the theme remains topical. Since returning from a stint in Japan in early 2009, she has been amazed at Melbourne’s connection to the culinary. “Since then I’ve just noticed the amount of blogs and restaurant reviews, and people generally just having more conversations that seem to be revolving around food and eating out,” she explains.
Gluttony and the Gourmand will open this Thursday. Guests can expect to see a range of mediums, from photography and “quirky and whacky” illustrations, to large sculptures and an installation involving simultaneous exercise and the consumption of food. With such variation, Feyza predicts spectators will each take home something different from the exhibit. “It’s very fitting for Melburnians to be foodies… It’s not just about satiating hunger; it’s about representing who you are, what you know, and where you eat. I would like people to see their role in all of this and make up their own minds,” she says with anticipation.
Not so long ago, decent restaurants were more or less on par. Now, with the exception of a handful of standouts, the sense of being rushed tends to overshadow the quality of the fare on offer, and that’s only if you can nab a table. The recipe for a successful eatery appears to be as follows: add a bunch of extreme waiters, either the extremely attentive or extremely self-concerned variety will suffice; then mix in an attractive sommelier for colour, not flavour; blend with a celebrity chef who owns a fashionable restaurant or four; combine with a pinch of modern-industrial chic; and finally, top with up to three hats. So where did our growing food obsession come from?
“There’s a lot available in Melbourne. We are so multicultural and there’s lots of variety. Then there’s the fact that people have cameras and smart phones and all of that; you’ve got people whose job it is just to blog about the different cafes they’ve gone to. There are entire networks out there, so there’s greater access to information and a greater amount of input. It’s not just left up to food critics, everyone can be a critic and get their voice heard through a different medium,” suggests Feyza.
She’s right. Every other person in Melbourne is a ‘foodie’. Since Gael Greene of New York Magazine first published the word in 1980, it has evolved into a term used to describe any gastronomic aficionado, from professional food critic to your home-grown blogger. Even though being a foodie unites like-minded people, Feyza maintains it also divides some. “Accessing good quality food can be quite expensive, and it’s just as heavily branded as McDonald’s and other large corporations…It’s something that most definitely affects everyone; we all consume food, we all eat it, but now it’s become this contested thing of ‘where do you go and where you eat,’” she explains.
Feyza points out that “even the humble exercise of having breakfast” has entire blogs dedicated to it. In a time where we are bombarded by the media with stylised images of food and reviews of restaurants, we have to remember that like any large corporation, food is an industry, and while Gluttony and the Gourmand critically evaluates our relationship with food, Feyza does not exclude herself from the Epicurean effect. “We – and when I say we that includes myself – are in this bind where we are obsessed with food. We want to go to these really expensive restaurants but by the same token I think we are aware that it’s just to demarcate our social status… we are all part of it,” she admits.
Feyza hasn’t sent any celebrity chefs exclusive invitations, and while she would be thrilled if George Calombaris attended, at the end of the day, “his opinion would matter just as much as anyone else’s.” The Gluttony and the Gourmand will cause you to consider our foodie fetish in a different light. As literature Nobel Prize winner George Bernard Shaw once claimed, “There is no sincerer love than the love of food.” Then again, 50 Cent also once told his girlfriend he loved her “like a fat kid loves cake.”
BY SOFIA LEVIN
