Leamington Spa

 

FAT

In his  introduction to John Yeadon’s  Vanitas  exhibition catalogue (2007), Will Barton writes, The first Western art works, the cave paintings, show hunters and hunted - the eater and the eaten.   Throughout Western art, food has continued to be central to painting.  From the many depictions of the ‘last supper’ to the 17th century Dutch  still life paintings of fish, fowl, fruit, bread, etc. John Berger, in his book Ways of Seeing describes ‘Still-Life with Fruit and Lobster’ by Jan de Heem as, ...the edible made visible. A more visceral treatment can be seen in Rembrandt’s ‘Carcass of Beef (Flayed Ox)’ of 1655 and in the later works of Chaim Soutine, Francis Bacon and Damien Hirst.

Today, we talk of food intolerance, morbid obesity, food refusal, anorexia, bulimia, dangerous additives, yeast infections, junk food, and so on. Food Studies has become a recognized discipline relating to anthropology, sociology, history, cultural studies, medicine and business. University courses on food are increasingly popular and in the media we are bombarded with cooking shows, dieting information and health programmes. Topics such as nutrition, dieting, fasting and food relief can provide valuable anthropological tools  offering informative means of understanding the underlying economic and political power relations of a given society. John Yeadon's interests here concern the politics of consumption and waste, the 'morbid symptoms' of a capitalist economy and the many myths and attitudes surrounding consumption, waste and national identity.

Running in tandem with his examination of the politics of food, consumption and waste, Yeadon is interested in language, in words, and lists of words. He often combines image and text in what he describes as a ‘critical’ and ‘ oppositional’ stance towards established social and political norms. His images, text and installations confront the familiar attitudes, prejudices and possible misconceptions of his audiences. In some of the juxtapositions of image and word, the words are chosen at random. Commenting on some of his random arrangements of image and word, Yeadon says  If the words make sense, I don't use them.

The works which have been selected for exhibition at the G150 Gallery where initially conceived as ironic/satirical/cynical installations for eating places and have been exhibited at Browns Cafe Bar and the Herbert Cafe at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry and the Nexus cafe in Manchester. It has been observed that these installations have the same character and function as Yeadon’s earlier political works of the 1970s, specifically his 'agit prop' banners protesting the rise of the National Front in Britain and the Pinochet coup in Chile. Their context is the carnivalesque and the street theatre of the political demonstration.

Commenting on Yeadon’s critical and ironic use of food imagery and text for political effect, Nick Smale writes,

 By mimicking the universal displays of food, as seen in, for example, McDonalds, Burger King, and Big Mac, Yeadon's work gains authority. It plays them at their own game, turns the tables on them and lifts away the glamorous gloss that hides a less appetising reality. Like Pop Art artists in the 60s, he brings the commercial, the outside non-art world into the gallery that's surprising and refreshing.
Nick Smale Artspace, Summer 2007

Alan Dyer

LIES, Browns Café Bar, Coventry

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