Meat You There

So. I'm quite busy at the moment with writing deadlines and marking. Apparently the majority of people spend January on a beach somewhere running in slow motion while tossing their heads back and laughing.

What fools, eh. I'll do that when I'm dead... right? Oh.

Anyway, I couldn't resist posting these incredible sculptures from the Meat After Meat Joy exhibit back in 2008.





I love these pieces because they are multivalent, they could read in any number of ways, depending on the politics, beliefs and experiences of the individual viewer.

To me, as simultaneously organic yet artificial forms they bring home the reality of living creatures torn apart and reassembled into objects of desire. The Frankensteinian nature of the Nike runners puts a Gothic twist on the shoe fetishism so encouraged in Western culture, while the teacup suggests an horrific substance lurking behind a (gendered?) domestic facade.

Curator Heide Hatry was interested in the role of meat as both a medium and a symbolic substance:

"By putting these artists together, the exhibition seeks to investigate the uncanny effect meat as a medium is for artist and viewer. This is not a show about meat as spectacle but about meat as signification, precisely because meat does not signify (a body) but its very annihilation."

My favourite is the toilet. I mean, wow. I find myself asking 'what is it?' Trying to identify distinct body parts in the larger shape. What is that big blob at the back? But these are not natural formations, so no 'real' body parts are to be found.


It seems rather poignant that an appliance designed to disguise and sweep away human refuse has been remade from flesh. Perhaps a timely reminder that we can never erase our waste completely. It has to go somewhere. There is a cost to pay, and we must manage our rubbish or suffer the consequences via the destruction of our own bodies and environment.

You can check out a video from the exhibit here.

{Via Miss Cakehead and Eat Me Daily}