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SIMMER

Three artworks beside each other of different kinds of ramen noodle dishes with Japanese text and receipts around the drawings
SIMMER

Itsuo Kobayashi
Untitled (detail), 2010 - 2015,
100 pieces
SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury
Image by Jeremy Weihrauch

SIMMER was a collaborative project between artists, local cooks, chefs and family members, centred on the experiences of preparing and sharing food.

As a part of the exhibition, MAMA presented TABLE, a rotating foyer installation which hosted weekly recipe demonstrations by local cooks. Each TABLE event featured a different presentation that introduced a selected recipe for visitors to make at home.

This major original exhibition considered how food can bring us together, break down barriers and open us up to new experiences.

Exhibited artists:
Aruna Gandhi, EJ Son, Eva Aguila, Gabriel Sanchez, haha vegan, Inuuywa Mama, Itsuo Kobayashi, Marites Roque Neal, Nabilah Nordin, Navi Kaur and Rice Brewing Sisters Club.

EJ Son: titty tree

EJ Son’s practice examines power relations across gender, sexuality, race, politics and art history. They also reference or find inspiration in food such as potato, egg, cucumber and carrot, in the creation of sculptural or ceramic works. Titty tree is a new sculptural light work by EJ Son, using the bottoms of capsicum and tomato as inspiration. The underside of these vegetables form flowery patterns, which have been cast in silicone to create 444 nipple flowers, in response to an interaction the artist had with their halmeoni:

I hadn’t seen my grandma in over fifteen years when I visited her in Korea during a particularly brutal winter. I had newly adopted a feminist perspective and disposed of every bra I owned. My grandma greeted me excitedly, but as I took my coat off, her eyes caught my hardened nipples piercing through my layers. She burst out laughing and asked if she could take a look at them. Hesitant, but as one might offer their palms to a fortune teller, I leaned in so she could take a closer look at my stretched out sweater. She cackled louder, “Just like your mother!!! They will bring you a good husband!!! Just like your father!!!”

Layers of silicone on top of each other, each a flower shape created from the tops of tomatoes and capiscums
EJ Son

titty tree, 2021
Silicone, steel, led light
SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury
Image by Jeremy Weihrauch

Layers of silicone on top of each other, each a flower shape created from the tops of tomatoes and capiscums
EJ Son

titty tree (detail), 2021
SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury
Image by Jeremy Weihrauch

Eva Aguila: Comida a Mano

Eva Aguila is an artist and organiser based in NYC. Her experimental practice ranges from sound, video and performance, and more recently has been informed by the oral histories of rural community members in Michoacán, where her parents lived before moving to Los Angeles. In Comida a Mano, Eva Aguila interviews her father and cousin on the importance of tortilla in Mexican culture.

Food is central to my Mexican heritage, and I believe it tells the story of our roots and how we once lived. Besides language, food is an integral way to pass on culture. I ask, what is a utensil? Growing up, there was always a big stack of tortillas in the middle of the dining table during meals. We would rarely see utensils on the table (only on the occasion of eating soup). This is the cultural norm for a lot of families yet still can be seen as strange in western-centric dining etiquette. The unspoken questions about class and being “civilised” come to light during interviews with my father and cousin in Comida a Mano.

A film still of food and cooking tortillas in Mexico
Eva Aguila

Comida a Mano (film still), 2019
SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury, 2021
Image by Jeremy Weihrauch

A film still of food and cooking tortillas in Mexico
Eva Aguila

Comida a Mano (film still), 2019
SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury, 2021
Image by Jeremy Weihrauch

A film still of food and cooking tortillas in Mexico
Eva Aguila

Comida a Mano (film still), 2019
SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury, 2021
Image by Jeremy Weihrauch

Itsuo Kobayashi

Itsuo Kobayashi began working at a soba restaurant in Saitama, northwest of Tokyo, when he was 26 years old and during this time began to make detailed illustrations with written thoughts about food or meals he had eaten. After twenty working as a soba chef, Itsuo Kobayashi retired due to developing a neurological condition that restricts his movement. However, he has never stopped making artwork. Itsuo Kobayashi consistently orders food to be delivered to his home, and illustrates each meal in detail, filling in the blank spaces of his compositions with meal names, prices and opinions about the food and ingredients used. In some illustrations, descriptive words such as “delicious” are jotted down to recall good memories for those nostalgic moments when he flicks through earlier works. Itsuo Kobayashi has produced over 1000 illustrations across the past three decades.

A series of hand illustrated artworks of lunchtime meals from a Japanese artist.
Itsuo Kobayashi

Untitled (detail), 2010 - 2015,
SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury, 2021
Image by Jeremy Weihrauch

A series of hand illustrated artworks of lunchtime meals from a Japanese artist.
Itsuo Kobayashi

Untitled (detail), 2010 - 2015,
SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury, 2021
Image by Jeremy Weihrauch

A series of hand illustrated artworks of lunchtime meals from a Japanese artist.
Itsuo Kobayashi

Untitled (detail), 2010 - 2015,
SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury, 2021
Image by Jeremy Weihrauch

A series of hand illustrated artworks of lunchtime meals from a Japanese artist.
Itsuo Kobayashi

Untitled, 2010 - 2015,
Ink on paper, 100 pieces
SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury, 2021
Image by Jeremy Weihrauch

Nabilah Nordin: Domestic Dough Factory

Nabilah Nordin is a sculptor whose installations playfully embrace wonky craftwork and material invention. Domestic Dough Facility is no exception. By romanticising the behind the scenes process of ‘making’ in a studio or bakery, this non-functional dough machine plays on the aesthetics of industrial food production. While drawing from manufacturing contraptions such as conveyor belts, silos, funnels and tubes to shape each dough machine, these parts serve no actual function.

Without functionality, these machines become curious monuments, serving only as support for displaying dough and bread. Nabilah Nordin’s material interest in dough stems from its lumpy, oozy, skin-like and elastic sculptural potential, while the familiar yet strangely static material overloads the senses in a wondrous and absurd way.

Pastel coloured sculptures sitting on a table with brown, green and white tablecloths in front of a projected video of people sitting around a table eating food
Nabilah Nordin and Eva Aguila in SIMMER

Murray Art Museum Albury, 2021
Image by Jeremy Weihrauch

Pieces of clay and bread next to colourful sculptures appearing like a construction line.
Nabilah Nordin

Domestic Dough Facility (detail), 2021
Installation view
SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury
Image by Jeremy Weihrauch

Pieces of clay and bread next to colourful sculptures appearing like a construction line.
Nabilah Nordin

Domestic Dough Facility (detail), 2021
Installation view
SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury
Image by Jeremy Weihrauch

Colourful sculptures made from epoxy dough with pieces of between on top and between appearing like a construction line.
Nabilah Nordin

Domestic Dough Facility, 2021
Installation view
SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury
Image by Jeremy Weihrauch

Navi Kaur: Mērā Ghar

Navi Kaur is an artist and arts educator based in Birmingham, UK. Her practice is inspired by the lives of her budimom and baba ji as she intimately and playfully documents scenes of domestic, cultural and spiritual significance. Mērā Ghar is a video installation that replicates notions of her grandparents’ family home, garden allotment and place of worship. By presenting intimate footage of family, faith and food, the work explores the interconnected nature of spaces such as the home, the land and the Gurdwara for Sikh communities, revealing the level of care, love and discipline employed when cooking, gardening and reciting prayers.

Visitors are advised to remove their shoes before stepping inside the shed as this practice is customary before entering any Gurdwara.

A constructed shelter with glass doors and a carpet inside
Navi Kaur

Mērā Ghar, 2021
Installation view
SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury, 2021
Image by Jeremy Weihrauch

A glass and wood door with a circle shape with knives painted on top
Navi Kaur

Mērā Ghar, 2021
Installation view
SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury, 2021
Image by Jeremy Weihrauch

A constructed shelter with glass doors and a carpet inside
Navi Kaur,

Mērā Ghar, 2021
Installation view
SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury, 2021
Image by Jeremy Weihrauch

A video with beans and leaves in the background and a person cooking in their kitchen discussing selfcare and nourishment
Navi Kaur

Mērā Ghar (film still), 2021
SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury, 2021
Image by Jeremy Weihrauch

Rice Brewing Sisters Club: 사회적 발효 아카이브 Social Fermentation Archive

Rice Brewing Sisters Club are a collective based in South Korea who explore the idea of social fermentation. Their practice ranges from visual art, performance, creative writing, oral history, ecological thinking and auntie wisdoms. Rice Brewing Sisters Club experiment with ways to cultivate social networks between microorganisms, humans and the natural and urban environment throughout Southeast Asia. Thinking of fermentation as more than just a biochemical process, the Social Fermentation Archive is a compilation of the sisters’ travels across South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and Taiwan, connecting voices and practices engaged in social fermentation.

The Social Fermentation Archive consists of fermentation recipes, intercultural conversations and actions, collective practices, decolonial histories, geographical and geological observations, rituals and belief systems, all of which are conveyed in various forms of text, image, video, objects, and mapping experiments. The breadth of this social fermentation – both within the archive and among the travelled sites – reveals how important sharing cultural knowledge across national borders can be.

Between two large banners, two people walk while looking a recipes on top of pink tables
Rice Brewing Sisters Club

사회적 발효 아카이브 Social Fermentation Archive, 2021
Mixed media installation
SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury
Image by Jeremy Weihrauch

A large yellow fabric with black images and pieces of korean text on top
Rice Brewing Sisters Club

사회적 발효 아카이브 Social Fermentation Archive, 2021
Mixed media installation
SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury
Image by Jeremy Weihrauch

Mixed media installation with recipes, a video and large banners
Rice Brewing Sisters Club

사회적 발효 아카이브 Social Fermentation Archive, 2021
Mixed media installation
SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury
Image by Jeremy Weihrauch

A older woman looks closer at a recipe on a hanger
Rice Brewing Sisters Club

사회적 발효 아카이브 Social Fermentation Archive, 2021
Mixed media installation
SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury
Image by Jeremy Weihrauch

TABLE

An older woman in a colourful outfit with a purple apron on the top purs into a bowl as visitors look on.
Aruna Gandhi

SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury, January 2021.
Photo Jeremy Weihrauch,

Two women is colourful clothes present their dish pilau on a big plate when a woman in a green shirt behind them smiles as she speaks into the mic
Inuuwya Mama

SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury, December 2021.
Photo Jeremy Weihrauch,

A man in a blue shirt scrapes ingredients into a bowl while his partner a woman in a white and red shirt and black hat holds the bigger bowl.
haha vegan

SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury, January 2022
Photo Jeremy Weihrauch,

A smiling woman is a pink shirt
Marites Neal

SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury, January 2022
Photo Jeremy Weihrauch

 A man in a red and blue cap and a checkered apron holds a knife as he places ingredients into bowl
Gabriel Sanchez

SIMMER, Murray Art Museum Albury, Feburary 2022
Photo Jeremy Weihrauch

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