Zoe-Lee Skelton

Boil in a bag chicken

I’ll begrudgingly admit that I’m not a great cook. Some say (namely my parents) that I’m not an accomplished cook because my diet is too restrictive.

For all my sins I’m a vegetarian – a vegan for several years – and the latter was during my student years, so as you can imagine, mastering the art of fine dining was pretty low on my list of priorities.

That’s not to say I was eating unhealthily – far from it. But my relationship with food is almost synonymous with my feelings towards excretion – I like to get it over and done with as soon as possible. And I do it because I have to do it.

For some, this hasty attitude also extends towards buying, growing, and in some cases, the rearing of food too. People want to buy their food efficiently, yield their crops swiftly and feed their animals to obesity all the way to the abattoir (sorry, I felt a slight twinge of militarism there).

And I suppose, this is where my concerns lie. Although I’ve never been one to be complacent about where my food comes from – even if readiness is usually an overriding factor – I feel uncomfortable about the pace of cattle farming. A living breathing being is reared to a supermarket’s edible standard, slaughtered and then adorned in plastic or which ever material allows the consumer to quickly slap it on their plate.

I don’t know which one influenced the other, but my reasons for continuing to shun meat is largely due to the latent, speedy consumerism imparted onto life.

Anyway, I don’t need to show you pictures of factory farming or bleeding animals. We all know it exists. I’m not a spokesperson for PETA for goodness sake.

In the triptych below, you’ll see an experiment with latex in re-purposed packaging bags which were hung from the tops of the walls in an installation at Middlesex University.

I tried to evoke the latent brutality that the flesh of mass produced meat carries with it, which is only enhanced by the clinical packaging. It’s called boil in a bag chicken:

Boil in a bag chicken

Circle frame

In this picture, using Photoshop CS5, I created a copy of the original photograph (the background), used the elliptical tool to draw a perfect circle over the desired section and then unchecked the visibility of the copy. This was the result:

Double Exposure

For this technique, I dragged and dropped the plated meat picture on top of the cat. To increase the presence of the layer, I then moved the opacity dial in the layer tab up and down until I found the ideal strength. To enhance the colours and tones, I manipulated the cyan tone and blue curves in the top layer to bring out the blue ring of the plate. I’ve called this one ‘Kitty dreams’ – I think it’s pretty self explanatory.

I’m totally besotted with the large scale oil paintings by Netherlands based artist Joram Roukes. He’s a young, contemporary painter making a name for himself in the street-art scene.

image courtesy http:/www.roomsmagazine.com/index.php/2013/03/les-bons-sauvages-by-joram-roukes/

His works currently on show at The Stolen Space Gallery in Brick Lane, London appear to piece together a set of disparate characters – some masquerading as maybe one or two animals – captured in the aftermath of violence.

Imagery is fragmented, as if clipped from a magazine, a newspaper or literally called up from a memorable observation. This layering of contexts, both in technique and metaphor creates a highly charged narrative that is somewhat uncanny. We identify with the mundanity of depicted everyday situations from a couple sat on a sofa, yet feel alienated by the sardonic animal heads married with a human torso. 

  Image courtesy Stolen Space Gallery

This collage like way of assembling his subjects is reminiscent of street art; however the consideration paid to proportions allows for the surreal and realistic to coalesce, and the overall commentary isn’t didactic or mis-leading, but some how reflective of something you too have seen or remember, especially in the group scenes.

image courtesy http:/fourmefouryou.wordpress.com/tag/fourmefouryou-wordpress-com/page/15/

 
Portraiture is colurful and ripe with interpretation, but scratch underneath the comic overtures and something sinister is lurking. For this show, Roukes alludes to the binaries of nature, nurture and life and death in today’s society, and the varying manifestations of these opposing themes – often dark and looming.   

‘Le Bons Sauvages’ is open until 14 April at the Stolen Space Gallery