A body of work in progress, (in painting, drawing, writing and film) exploring a relationship between art, power and substance, through the metaphor of the King’s Feast.
The substance of power is represented by the Kings form (the metaphor of his physical/metaphysical body and related transubstantive economy). The customs and costumes of his court, together with his performance, are mirrored in the preparations of the food for his Feast. As the flesh, fowl, fish, fruit is formed and cooked, so is he prepared, and finally presented, for ‘the nourishment and sustenance of all hys people’.
The Royal Banquet/Bankette is aptly named, and the economy of the flesh (artfully cooked, repackaged, reformed) passes through to become glitter, gold, to become fire and light, in appearance keeping the body alive and in motion. The feast is the fabrication of a phantasmagoria machine, the projector of the king’s image (the IMAGO, which we may come to see has many iterations). It is the image of a functioning body, a working system, which simultaneously conceals the operations of the machine, whose handiwork/ (chirugia) constitutes both physical and symbolic violence.
The Kitchen/Macellum...
(engraving from The Illustrated London News, 3 December 1842)
