Artist: Miralda
Project comissioned by John Kaldor & Kaldor Public Art Projects
Project manager: Dessislava Pirinchieva
KPAP Team: Emily Sullivan, Bettina Kaldor, Tait de Lorenzo, Monique Watkins.
Chef: Emily Mayhew
Chiswick at the Gallery restaurant team: Nicola Somerville, Emma Williams, Richard Spencer, Ben Turner, Matt Moran.
Conceptual advisor: Barbara Santich, Professor Emeritus in the History Department and a culinary historian at University of Adelaide.
Drawings: Miralda
Sweet Art: Anthea Leonard
Flowers: Saskia Havekes
Video director: James Vaughan
DOP: Dimitri Zaunders
Photos: Pedro Greig & Daniel Boud
Sydney, Australia, September 2019
Antoni Miralda who is an interdisciplinary “whose work since the 1960s has evolved around the object, food, ceremonies, interventions in public spaces, monuments, and the concept of Food Culture”, approached me because of the exciting project he was working on.
Miralda met John Kaldor, a dedicated collector, patron, and supporter of contemporary art back in the '70s in New York at a dinner that was hosted by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. John Kaldor, who created an incredible project called Kaldor Public Art Projects and brought the most groundbreaking and innovative art in its time to Australia, invited Miralda to create Colour Feast back in 1973 for the opening of the John Kaldor Fabricmaker showrooms, and Coloured bread at the Art Gallery of NSW as Kaldor Public Art Project 4.
Fifty years since the beginning of KPAP, John Kaldor was organizing the 35th Kaldor Public Art Project, an exhibition created by British artist Michael Landy and a big-scale celebration of his 50th anniversary of creating meaningful projects for the Australian community.
John Kaldor commissioned Miralda to create three opening ceremonies, three extraordinary feasts to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Kaldor Public Art Projects. This is the way Five Feastables was starting to grow inside the mind and took shape by the hand of Antoni Miralda.
Miralda invited me to help him to manage the project, and we flew both to Australia for an incredible adventure. We worked with different local teams of professionals in order to make the project happen.
/on the right: Miralda´s drawing of tables installation/
Mirdala honoured the five decades of Kaldor Public Arts Projects with five tables as monuments with dimensions of 105-175 cm high and 240-300 cm diameter.
The tables were dressed in table vinyls where all names of the artist along of 50th tenure of KPAP were spread on and their diameters were surrounded by table clothes.
Each table was conceived by the artist in different colors and respectively carrying diverse concepts and symbols of meanings. A scarf, created by Miralda was given to the guests as a conceptual map of the feast and an introduction to his rich imaginary.
Several levels were the contraction of all tables. On the bottom surface were precisely placed coloured canapes: scones, sandwiches, assorted jellies, prawns, rice paper rolls, pasta, ants, tarts, crabs, hummus, pavlovas, lamingtons, all edible and offered for the guests. And on the tabletops were majestically situated: wattle, emu eggs and spices, cauliflowers, polenta, royal icing.
The native ingredients were protagonists of the feast which was blessed by confetti rain with all names of the artists who contributed along the 50th years of KPAP. Guests were reflected by special lighting in fuchsia colour and at the end of the museum space was projected in loop a video celebrating in colours each decade of public art at Australian territory brought by the bright mind of John Kaldor.
/on the left: Miralda´s drawing of the scarf/
Installation
Opening night
