Kitchen Biotope

An installation in the Forest of Darmstadt, Germany, for the `7.Internationale Waldkunstpfad' 2014. This project was made with the help of assistants (young unemployed and students). The concept was to make a woodland museum of conserved foodstuffs found in the forest, but developed into a `Museum of the Moment’ – anything that could be `conserved’ - the hut, the tree roots beneath the hut, the tools and materials used to make the work, along with foodstuffs and found elements from the forest - were `conserved'. The hut was adapted (extra windows/ledges and a cut out floor). The exterior of the hut and the hole in the floor (revealing the tree roots) were clad in roofing felt. The interior contained a suspended `kitchen table' with the `conserves’ displayed in the windows. While I did most of the work on the hut, the conserves were mostly made by the assistants. I provided them with the materials - pickling spices, liquids, beer and alcohol, to gherkins and onions, wire wool, branches, pine cones, gelatin, screws, snail shells, sheet lead, metal shavings (etc etc etc) and anything else I had encountered during the project time. They had carte blanche. Their task was to create any combinations and presentations of these ingredients in the most imaginative way possible, in any way that pleased them.