Studio Orta

The husband-and-wife artist team Lucy + Jorge Orta—who in the past 25 years have explored social and ecological issues—focus on consumer food waste and global food distribution in a major show at the City Gallery and Museum in Peterborough. The exhibition examines the couple’s initiatives linked to the “politics of food”, encompassing the rituals associated with eating together. The Art Newspaper

Two new sculptures form the centre pieces to the show. Bread inspired by 70 x 7 The Meal, which took place in Peterborough Cathedral Square in 2015 and during which hundreds of loaves of bread were baked by local residents and then cast into aluminium. Carried aloft by the traditional wheelbarrows, the humble objects cross cultures and centuries reminding us of the ancestral cycles of sowing, reaping and milling, the hand-sculpting of wood and dough to create unique manifestations of our basic human needs.
Drawing from the artists’ expedition to the Peruvian Amazon in 2009, the installation Seeds is composed of 31 unique larger-than-life Murano glass seed pods framed by a collection of intricate watercolour drawings that make up a metaphorical Seed Bank. The intricate beauty and diversity of our natural world is prevalent in the artists’ act of 'preserving' varieties that may be threatened with extinction.

The exhibition also draws together archival work from All in One Basket (1996) and HortiRecycling Enterprise (1999), alongside the entire collection of limited edition Royal Limoges porcelain from the 70 x 7 The Meal series presented on the bespoke silk-jacquard table runners, woven by local Suffolk weavers.

An extensive program of engagement activities around the politics of food, accompanies the exhibition and can be booked through Metal Peterborough.