Sophie Iremonger

Mashing up animals and plants in a hole in your face, with others, Looking at them Loved ones also spinning their vortices of crushed plants and animals, Staring with love in each others eyes,

An Eating.

Born 1983 Dublin Ireland, educated at the National College of Art and Design, Sophie Iremonger graduated in 2008 with a BA in Painting. She has lived in Berlin for many years developing a strong studio practice and has exhibited extensively in Europe and America. She makes paintings, books, and illustrations thematically concerned with wastelands and the junctures between human and non-human worlds. Other themes include food and deconstructing baroque art. Her paintings utilize print, collage, and acrylics. She also illustrates and writes books, which is a new development for her.

Written and illustrated by Sophie Iremonger ‘An Eating’ was an experimental cook book written over two years and completed in 2018. It was read as part of of an immersive installation at the Kunstsenter Bergen Norway. ‘An Eating’ was published by Coda press founded by Scott Elliott in 2016 who also edited the book in his capacity as curator and program organiser.

During my residency in Bergen I staged a reading and food performance surrounded by experimental jellies with flavours like green tea and tuna. The food and reading synchronised to produce an ambiguous experience of disgust and pleasure connecting artists and community through word and food.

‘An Eating’ is a collection of economic recipes interspersed with stream of consciousness prose and sketches in ink. It concerns ‘Precariat’, a new economic category of human, privileged yet under paid. A new type of human who clings onto gentility though she is chipping frozen peas off the back of a shared art studio freezer in an attempt to make soup.

Taking place in Ireland, Finland, Berlin, Norway and London, the recipes listed are made with the minimal amount of ingredients necessary. It is a book about the colonial origins of basic kitchen supplies and survival skills. It is a slim book about togetherness. Each friendship in the authors life is represented by a recipe.

The job and its torments are only relieved by shared moments ‘An Eating’ is also a mini memoir of mediocre work moments experienced in minimum wage jobs as the artist struggles to maintain her ideal of ‘being an artist’ while working 12 hour shifts in the British library canteen. of oddity, despair and fathomless exhaustion with diverse colleagues all speaking different languages who frequently misunderstand each other. The author shares her experiences of serving chips to 20 school children when there were no chips, of serving quiches when they were refused to be solid in the middle and leaked their raw contents across the counter. Such an experience wouldn’t be complete without the chicken resurrecting itself back up from the floor where it was so unceremoniously dropped and landing back on your plate, so of course, that happens too. Bon appetit!

illustration from ‘An Eating’, 2018

‘Writing and illustrating really took off for me about 3 years ago because of a book entitled ‘An Eating’ which I wrote and illustrated in collaboration with the Hordeland Kunstsenter in 2018. It was edited by Scott Elliott and designed by Magnus Nyquist as part of the Kunstsenter art program 2018. The book was funded by the Norwegian artscouncil and published by Coda press, a press Scott founded in 2016 focused on the production of limited edition artist books. I read an Eating in person at an event at the Hordeland Kunstsenter, which you can see me doing in the attached photo.

Scott had suggested to me that I create a book about two years prior during a visit to Berlin and we worked together over those two years towards the completion of this unique and exciting book. The result was a book with a unique voice which opened up new possibilities for me in regards to using the written word. After ‘An Eating’ I started experimenting more with writing and also took on paid illustration projects, examples of which are a magazine cover for ExBerliner in 2018, 15 illustrations for a privately commissioned children book ‘Squire Bear’ in 2019 and an illustration of Author Lauren John Joseph for their book cover in 2020. I also wrote and illustrated 2 unpublished children books: ‘Big wind in Little Crangle Knocker’ in 2018 and ‘small cats / Large cats’ in 2019.

I look forward to integrating more writing into my practice and blurring the already indistinct line between illustration and fine art.

This book appears to be about cats, but is really a colourful story about human attitudesthe ways humans see pet vs wild cats, and the different roles and attitudes we assign to them: dangerous vs cute etc. Sometimes it is only by comparison with another species that we can truly see ourselves. Here the human beings are seen only as hands and feet but their presence is felt in the book by the way the cats behave towards these human hands and feet, by the way they look up at the unseen people. The purpose of the book is to help children ask questions about what it means to be a human and what it means to be a cat. Why do we see cats the way we do? how can this be communicated in a simple fun way? and what can we learn about ourselves from how we interact with animals? I chose the colours used in this book because of a desire to create a retro 70’s feel, inspired by illustrators like Brian Wildsmith. The book was also inspired by Hillaire Belloch’s ‘Book of beasts for worse children’.

Techniques: using mono-print throughout as a unifying factor, initially a blot of acrylic paint was applied to a piece of acetate. This was painted into a rough approximation of the desired image upon the acetate, then Fabriano paper (Rose Ivoir) was placed on top of the blot, and rolled with a lino cutting roller on the clean side. Then the paper was peeled from the wet paint. The resulting blots on the paper contained ridges that I later worked around when the paint was dry by high-lighting with oil pastel. These ridges could be turned into the feel of fur or the texture of a flower petal, or the look of tree branches. I worked with the blot when it was dry to create the finished image using water colour, acrylic paints, faber castell brush tip pens and oil pastels.