70 x 7 The Meal Act XXIII, Barbican, 2005
Date:
2005
Ref:
0600.23
Materials:
MIU trailer, hand silkscreen printed table runner, OrtaWater bottles, extending table, projector lights, sound recordings, Royal Limoges porcelain plates (Ed 210)
Exhibition history:
2014 Parc de la Villette Paris, France; 2005 The Barbican Art Gallery, The Curve, London, UK; 2001 COPIA, Napa Valley, California, USA
Courtesy:
Lucy + Jorge Orta
For the twenty-third Act, the Barbican Art Gallery London commissioned a site-specific installation of 70 x 7 The Meal for their eponymous Curve Gallery. Entitled Lunch with Lucy, the artists designed an extending table hitched to a trailer, kitted out with projectors and recording equipment, the dinner-table installation served as a stage for a series of panel discussions presided over by Lucy Orta. The discussions took the form of gastronomic encounters between food specialists, including Harriet Lamb, Director of the Fairtrade Foundation; Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University; Wendy Fogarty, International Councillor for Slow Food UK; Dr Peter Barham, Reader in Physics at Bristol University, author of The Science of Cooking, and developer of Molecular Gastronomy with the chef Heston Blumenthal; Allegra McEvedy, chef and founder of the Leon organic fast food chain. The discussions were chaired by the art critic John Slyce and recorded for broadcast on the PS1 Radio channel. The unusual media setting for Lunch with Lucy, essentially on the back of a trailer, was complimented by a new edition of Royal Limoges porcelain plates, depicting the artists’ current interest in water scarcity, adding another layer to the discussions and the threatened natural resources of water.