Edited by MollyCaenwyn Cover art by Nicole Jacquot
7. Introduction 10. Aiden Moore 14. Croque Madame Muffins 16. Michelle Toal 20. Nicole Jacquot 24. “Food For Thought” by Femme Brûlée 26. James Ford 30. Elle Haswell 33. “Eating Out” by MollyCaenwyn 34. Hannah Munby 38. Ytenebev 44. Contributors
Hello and welcome! I’m Molly, I love food and I love art. What better way to combine two of my passions then by bringing them together? Soap and Biscuits is a zine focused on connections between artists and food and their way of depicting and portraying this relationship throughout their work. We see this subject throughout the entire history of art, where it be Dutch still life painting of fruit and vegetables, Andy Warhol’s soup cans or Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party. Food is used across an array of genres of art, be it the subject, medium or used to convey social, historical and cultural issues. In this first issue of Soap and Biscuits, we are introducing up and coming artists and the different uses of food in their artist practise; be it through graphic design, photography, illustration or written pieces. The work ranges from colour theory and the institution of dieting in “ The Blue Diet” by Hannah Munby to the morbid “Last Suppers” of James Ford’s graphic design. I hope this will open your mind to the world of art and food, introducing you to some fantastic new artists and will hopefully whet your appetite for more.
Bon appetit!
Molly x
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Photographs by MollyCaenwyn
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Aiden Moore
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Harts Illustration student, Aiden Moore, creates an body of work influenced by his keen interests with Asian culture. Bringing this inspiration to the sketchbook, he produces two pieces focused on the candy culture of Japan. For his first piece, Aiden draws upon different areas of Japanese culture to redesign the packaging of Strawberry flavoured Pocky, such as the widely recognisable Japanese schoolgirl and current Japanese fashion trends. His second is an illustrated postcard depicting Japanese culture through famous Japanese sweets. He creates an urban themed composition with inspiration from the characters from Japanese messaging app “LINE�.
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Croque Madame Muffin Rachel Khoo is probably one of my favourite chefs, when her first book came out, I jumped at the chance to buy it (on sale on amazon that is). I loved her fusion of French dishes with English twists so couldn’t wait to get started. Still incorporating all the classic components of a Croque Madame, I used soya milk for the béchamel, which worked fine, and you can always leave out the ham if you’re a veggie. This recipe is an easy one, great for breakfast! I’ve written this out to make 4. You will need a muffin tray! Preheat the oven to 180 oC
For the rest of the muffins
For the Béchamel Sauce 1 tbsp butter 1 tbsp plain flour 200ml milk a few gratings of nutmeg ½ – 1 tsp of Dijon mustard pinch of salt and pepper
4 slices of sliced white bread or wholemeal or brown a few tbsp of melted butter 4 slices of ham 4 small eggs (if you can’t get small eggs, that’s fine) 25-50g of grated cheese to top the muffins
First we want to make the Béchamel Sauce! Set a small to medium saucepan on a medium heat and melt 1 tablespoon of butter. Whisk the flour in with the butter to make the roux ( this will thicken the sauce) and slowly add the milk, whisking well and let thicken in between each addition. Finish this off with adding the nutmeg, Dijon mustard, season to taste. Remove from the heat. Next, cut the crusts off of the bread and then use a rolling pin to roll each slice of bread to half its original thickness. Brush over a little of the melted butter and place into the holes of the muffin tray. Into each bread muffin add 1 slice of ham (I like to shred mine up), then 1 egg (if you don’t have small eggs, when breaking your egg open, pour a little of the white away so the egg and the sauce will be able to fit into the muffin), a tablespoon of the Béchamel sauce and
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a sprinkling of cheese. Brush the edges of the muffin with a little more of the melted butter. Place into the oven for 15 minutes if you would like a runny yolk and then an extra 5 minutes if you want a hard yolk.
Text and image by Femme Brulee Recipe by Rachel Khoo, rewritten by Femme Brulee
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Michelle Toal
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Stop Playing With Your Food 2014 Jersey Based artist, Michelle combines an interest in the body, female identity and her own eating habits to create a series of sculptures entitled “Stop Playing With Your Food”. Using chocolate, lard and pulled sugar as her mediums, she explores the childlike notion of ‘playing with your food’ to create floral sculptures. This use of food plays on tension between disgust, pleasure, guilt and cravings, exploring the social issues revolving around the female image.
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Nicole Jacquot
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Nicole Jacquot’s work explores the worlds within her imagination and her connection to the outer world. Heavily influenced by nature, the connections between man and earth run throughout her work; her aim, to arise inspiration, emotions and to question the viewer’s own relationships with the world. Influenced by social and political topics, Nicole has a strong passion for animal rights and the defence and welfare of the earth, which is portrayed through the tension within her drawings.
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Food For Thought
Communal dinner raising awarenss of food wastage in the UK On arrival there was ambient acoustic music filling the hall, but no one to appreciate it. The event had just started so that wasn’t exactly any surprise however quickly filled up with families and children, students, the elderly, all kinds of people. Throughout the evening their different events included musical acts, poetry readings and speeches by the organisers. There was a room for the children and a lounge area in front of the stage with sofas and pillows.
The event took place in Springbourne, Bournemouth, located in The Bourne Spring Centre, an old converted church. The event was brought together by a group of students on the Arts and Events Managment course at AUB. The idea surrounding the event was to raise awareness of food wastage in our day-to-day lives, be it through home food wastage or supermarket and commercial wastage Food parcels were donated from a number of different farms and food suppliers such as Berry Hill Farm, G.C Produce, Booker Wholesale and Kino Lounge; food that would have usually been thrown away. They were then turned into a feast of different dishes creating a dinner free of charge for the community. Their inspiration came from The People’s Kitchen that do a similar monthly dinner.
On the right side of the room was an area to sit down and watch films around the subject of food waste but more importantly, there was the food. A colourful selection,
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the dishes included, feta couscous salads, pesto, mushroom stroganoff, fruit salads and raw vegetable salads. My favourite dish had to be the Wild Garlic Pesto and everyone seemed to agree. They adored it. The communal table layout was long and decorated with flowers and candles, which looked beautiful as the sun began to descend and the room darkened. On the left side of the room there was a wall filled with information on the project as well as facts on UK wastage, tips on how to reduce household waste and information on poverty and food. The event had even produced its own zine, free to all. This contained recipes on how to
use left over bread, photography work, interviews with Freegans, articles on food waste and food foraging. The zine was bound together with a cotton stitching, which attached a thick piece of paper that was meant to be torn away and planted. Overall I thought the event and the really got their message across. One of the greatest things about this event was that they had a lot of food left over, so there was waste, created from waste. A huge success in the message they were trying to send out. The event really brought the community together and the fact they had leftovers heightened their cause more.
Words and photos by Femme Br没l茅e
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James Ford
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Graphic design student James Ford uses a combination of photo and type to create a poster depicting the last meals of the last four people to be executed in the USA. This dark subject uses food as a means to shock the audience. James plays on the notion of using dinner to create a piece of work that symbolises something ‘that is enough to put you off of your dinner’.
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Elle Haswell
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Fancy Foods 2014 Fine art and graphics student, Elle Haswell’s work is surrounded by a bold passion for feminism, taboos and the abject female body. Taking influences from the innuendos and food imagery of Sarah Lucas, Elle creates a vulva from pancakes, jam and cherries.
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Eating out When I first saw this piece by Haswell, I flipped my laptop round and exclaimed how everyone should look at it right that second. After their initial interest, they turned away in disgust. “Is that a vagina?! Really?” I nodded my head and smirked at their overblown squeamish reactions to the work. “Isn’t it fantastic?” I asked. With a fierce shake of their heads and the words ‘periods’ and ‘sick’ thrown around, I rolled my eyes and closed my computer. I adore abject art like this. I love art that defies rules and breaks the boundaries of everyday comfort zones. Julia Kriseteva’s Abject looks upon the body, interior and exterior, the inside out, and focuses on bodily functions and fluids. Haswell draws her inspiration from the instillation artist and photographer Sarah Lucas, who uses food to convey humorous scenes, with the suggestion of sexual innuendo throughout. Haswell’s use of every day breakfast foods of pancakes, jam and cherries in relation with menstruation, arouses a sense of the grotesque female body and an overall unnerving experience for the viewer. This combination of food and sexual organs instantly greets us with the euphemism and sexual pun of ‘eating out’, creating a scene of
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sexual taboo. The floral materials and patterns within the scene juxtaposes stereotypical roles of the western woman. Juxtaposing the hidden and revealed female; the floral and femme persona and the violent and bloody interior. The violence in this piece also brings to light everyday transphobia through the binary institution that all women have vaginas and all men have a penis. The use of floral material then becomes a satirical comment of the everyday binary expectations of genders. This subject runs throughout the rest of Haswell’s fine art and graphics work as well as a focus on the abject, rape culture and female anatomy.
Image by Elle Haswell at www.ellehaswellart.tumblr. com Text by MollyCaenwyn
Hannah Munby
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“The Blue Diet” Bournemouth based photographer Hannah Munby draws her subject matter from inspiration of personal issues. Within this piece “The Blue Diet”, Hannah begins by looking at her own personal interest in dieting, exploring the relationship between appetite and colour theory. She focuses this subject onto the colour blue as a deterrent from eating due to the colours’ rare prevalence with natural food sources, aiding in supressing the appetite of the dieter.
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Ytenebev
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An English multimedia based artist, Ytenebev ranges her work from abstract painting, drawing, sculpture to photography. This piece of writing records her journey to look for fruit of the colour blue in a stream of consciousness style. Ytemebev uses blue fruit as interaction with the public of Boscombe, asking them to handle to blueberries for a series of images that can be found on her website. This transcript and images were included in a show held at Boscombe’s Six Gallery titled “Froute” is a focus of fruit and journeys.
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Looking for blue fruit in Boscombe... Chaplin on a blue background, Council bins with blue tops, blue sky, breezy. Studio galleries...real art, what the fuck is real art... small shops, hanging baskets, fish ‘n chips... ambulance siren... tea room is blue ... my head’s into blue... yellow lines, white arrows, tarmac, red car... warehouses, Tea at Marie’s, duck egg blue... bin central, steel fences...do not climb... Private property do not park... Sea Road turn left... people going to the beach...met. office said 28 degrees...keep clear... Royal Arcade, Victorian. Look up, amazing architecture... blue shop Daily Echo, Devon candies... men litter picking with orange bags and a girl with brown baguette bags...another siren... sculpture with green wings, angel wings or palm tree wings... land train, Blooming Beautiful Bournemouth,... shorts and sunglasses... pedestrian area...Coral, O2 Academy both blue... paving, bollards, wooden benches... bag shop... newspaper flapping in the breeze... tall man, red t shirt looking at a poster... Salvation Army shop, blue front...white shop boarded up, blue handle and no graffiti,...Betfred, is blue... a blue car parked on the pavement outside Lloyds TS Blue, TS Blue? TSB...blue cash machines... Store 21 is blue, 50% off...old guy in black... man in a stripy top... lamp posts with fixings for hanging baskets but no baskets. Shoe Zone 40
blue require a supervisor...Primark, pile of blue t shirts, reductions...small girl stripy shirt big flower... Superdrug and Costalot for a coffee... smoking outside...loud guy in a yellow t shirt on a mobile...couple of fat children kicking a beer can ... Sovereign Centre, pigeons, white and blue bunting... bicycles chained to a planter...update, this planter is soon to be removed and is being treated for weed removal, work scheduled to improve the precinct... Gregg’s is blue, the Card Factory is blue... Gerry Cottles ‘Wow’ Circus coming to Branksome... buy one get one half price... two girls with orange hair... elderly gent with a stick... Overflowing bins, not blue...Boots is blue... total entertainment, disc repair...people queuing for money...cyclists in the pedestrian area... palm trees... pavement cafes...PDSA is blue...guy in a Japanese t shirt, girl in yellow shoes... Polish grocer....lots of fat people...classic English breakfast £5.25...sweet shop with red and blue lollipops, Mr Simms lumpy road chocolate...Electric Beach tanning studio...Boscanova, real fruit smoothies and Canadian pancakes...Blue lottery signs, play here... Wall’s love ice cream...people talking Polish... do not obstruct these gates...cycles attached to these gates will be removed... two blue bikes, two phone boxes... the great NHS upgrade, blue logo...25% off hearing aids... really loud family...bamboo coffee sandwich41
es...lady in black pushing trolley... alien invasion coming to the BIC, roller rink... pink girl, blue scooter... impressive beard sitting in a cafe... Sainsburys, very orange, blue baskets...taking off my blue sunglasses... fruit and vegetables, yellow, green pears, apples, bread...oh, that’s not fruit...onions, aubergine black, not blue... potatoes, vegetables not fruit ...for goodness sake Sainsburys, it’s muddled ...things in blue wrappers, red white and blue wrapping... Union Jack...tomatoes, oranges, grapes, passion fruit, figs purple, melons, peaches... blueberries...blueberries 150g for £2... are they English...oh fuck they’re grown in America...come on Mr Sainsbury where are the English ones...get your act together. Buying 150 g of the finest blueberries to introduce them to the people of Boscombe...
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Contributors Molly Caenwyn
www.Mollycaenwyn.com www.Femmebrulee.co.uk
Aiden Moore www.monsterteacup.tumblr.com
Michelle Toal
BA (Hons) Fine Art at The Arts University Bournemouth
Nicole Jacquot www.nicole-jacquot.tumblr.com
James Ford
Ba (Hons) Graphic Design at the Arts University Bournemouth
Elle Haswell www.ellehaswellart.tumblr.com
Hannah Munby www.hannahmunby.co.uk
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Ytenebev www.ytenebev.co.uk
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