About
Trolley Gallery is pleased to invite you to its forthcoming summer group show. Entitled âManiFesten', the gallery will be offering an unusual approach to the summer show format, as over a six day period, the artists selected will innovatively respond to the theme of food and eating in the gallery, with a programme of performance in an outside location nearby. The title âManiFesten' incorporates the shared and common theme by the artists in their work of exploring ideas of food, eating and public performance. ManiFesten explores the roles that artists have played both artistically and socially in food and dining, from Rothko's commission for the Seagram Restaurant, New York to the Futurist Cookbook by Marinetti and the YBAs patronage of St John's restaurant in London. In this respect the artists selected incorporate these ideas into
their own practice, and here work together to create the show's format.
Trolley Gallery will be transformed into an interactive installation by artist and set designer Robert Storey. Each night 12 members of the public will dine in a site-specific sculptural construction, incorporating the traditional role of chairs around a central dining table, but playing with ideas of scale and the role of encounter and the unexpected. Storey's work utilizes found materials such as reclaimed wood and household objects such as ladders, to create surreal constructions that can subvert the original, intended or expected use. His work is inspired by artists such as Christoph BuàËchel, who engages with the viewer by inviting them to partake in an unexpected encounter with the work. Storey creates sets and elaborate and imaginative costumes; for ManiFesten he will create 12 individual chairs that will lift the sitter towards the roof of the gallery, before lowering the ceiling to reveal the table around them as they sit. There will be communication to the servers below via various found bells and buzzers, which will indicate wine, water, the need to go to the toilet or leave the table, with a live video feed onto the gallery below, so others can observe the diners above.
Each unique event will commence at 7pm with a public performance outside the gallery, in various local locations. The programme has been curated by artist Ian Giles, and will include performances by an exciting selection of up and coming artists in this field: Awst and Walther, littlewhitehead, Tessa Lynch, Edward Fornieles, Eloise Fornieles and Kate Hawkins, as well as Giles himself. The artists will respond to the historical use of the public arena for public music performances, and everyone will be invited to attend. Full programme schedule will be posted individually shortly.
The concept of the menu has been created by artist Caroline Hobkinson, who runs gastronomic art tours of the area surrounding the gallery's location in Shoreditch. Hobkinson has recently created art food concepts for, among others, the Barbican. For ManiFesten she has explored the idea of the Land of Cockaigne, the legendary country of bountiful food and drink described in medieval tales and depicted in the work of Flemish artist Peter Breugel. With the focus on a feast, both visually and gastronomically, the artist has created
a three course menu, that will be presented in relation to the theme of unexpected fantasy and inverted proportion of Storey's sculpture. It will be formulated from the best and most delicious ingredients for, as it is in Cockaigne, the food is plentiful, the âskies rain with cheeses' and âcooked fish jump out of the water and land at one's feet'. As the ceiling is revealed, 12 freshly baked bread rolls will be suspended in mid air in front of the diners mouths, interspersed with cured sausages, followed by a whole oven-baked halibut
stuffed with little tiny fish and vegetables, followed by a giant magic porridge pot, in the form of creme brulee.
Guests will have the opportunity to take home a limited edition napkin by Hobkinson, Storey and Giles as well editions by artists represented by Trolley, Boo Saville and Henry Hudson. Rachael Haines will install in the gallery a gaffer tape kitchen area that guest can walk through.
The intention of ManiFesten is to engage guests with an original experience involving artists and food relocated to the gallery environment, and public performance in a readymade location. ManiFesten is itself an edition of 6 nights, with tickets only available in advance direct from the gallery. The total for each ticket is £50 and includes all food, wine and for £69 will include a limited edition artist napkin, numbered 1 to 72.
