Gross Domestic Product
Hermione Allsopp – Sculptor
Private View: Wednesday 4 October 2017, 6-9pm
5 October 2017 – 3 November 2017
One Star House Party – Chefs in the Gallery
Kevin McCrae, James Sharman and Trisha McCrae
Eight course tasting menu from the eight different countries they have built restaurants
Tuesday to Sunday, 5th October – 3rd November
Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop is excited to present a unique multidisciplinary project gathering culinary, contemporary and craft arts. Hermione Allsopp, sculptor whose medium is familiar domestic elements reconditioned to a new life and One Star House Party’s chefs trained in some of the world’s best restaurants, are occupying the gallery space for one month.
Kevin McCrae, Trisha McCrae and James Sharman have just spent eight months travelling to eight different countries, building eight very different restaurants out of what they discover along the way. So far, their restaurants have taken them to the Base camp of Mount Everest, night trains through Vietnam and to the streets of Mumbai. During their stay at Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop they will be serving an eight course tasting menu, made up from their favourite dish from each of the countries they have visited. A performance style installation, chefs will be cooking in a ‘kitchen’ built within the gallery in front of diners. Dinners will take place among Hermione Allsopp’s solo show of sculptures made by collecting discarded domestic objects and furniture and transforming them into new forms or compositions.
Gross Domestic Product is therefore a multi-sensory exhibition showing the culmination of an unprecedented pop-up restaurant’s research and travels, surrounded by the works of artist Hermione Allsopp’s sculptural body of work.
The objects Hermione Allsopp collects to make her sculptural work are familiar, known, domestic items that have been discarded in charity or junk shops – not, inert materials, but ones that carry collective attachments, memories and meanings. As sculpture, these redone, or un-done-up objects begin to exist as something else and are intended to raise questions about the value and material nature of everyday objects. Through the choice of objects, and the techniques she employs, she explores the boundary between repulsion and attraction, ideas of taste and notions of desire. The work also reflects on wider topics related to consumerism, psychological and physical interiors and exteriors
Kevin McCrae, Trisha McCrae and James Sharman (One Star House Party) apply the techniques they have acquired while being trained in some of the world’s best restaurants, including NOMA, The Ledbury and Tom Aikens, to create a new menu inspired by the ingredients and the experiences they found in China, Vietnam, Thailand, Everest Base Camp, India, Oman, Kenya and South Africa.