Description
The ‘Mouth Feels’ collection bred as a result of binge consuming podcasts about the ultra processed food industry, and lab produced ‘foods’. The starting point for many Ultra Processed Foods is the ‘Mouth Feel’, a texture manufactured to seem like real food when it hits your tongue, and to behave like food when you chew it. Then they add flavour, colours and preservatives to make it look like food.
This collection of vaguely figurative and pseudo functional ceramics is an exploration of what I’ve decided to call ‘Food Adjacent’ products. The sweet treats that have long inspired my work qualify as non-foods; they go in the separate sweet stomach, the same one as the puddings and the wine goes in (we all have one!). They don’t contribute on any nutritional level, but we are drawn in by their deliciousness and their tempting appearance. I’m enticed by the buzz words the ‘big food’ manufacturers use in making their products so alluring that we can resist them. Phrases like ‘Dynamic Contrast’ which combination of different textures in your mouth all at once makes your tongue do a little happy dance triggering your brain to release aaalll the happy hormones. Or the ‘Bliss Point’, at which the precise combination of sugar, fat and salt combines to make your taste buds tingle and over-ride your brains instincts to stop eating.
This guy is inspired by the ultimate in extruded foods … who remembers the Turkey Twizzler uproar from the noughties? Gross, eh? Cast in pristine white parian porcelain with accents in pastel tones, he has hollow with a little twist of porcelain balancing in his enticing little mouth opening, and a little matching dollop to place as you wish and complete the picture.
Parian Porcelain
Height approx 23cm
