August 1st
Last Supper is simply a feast, a celebration and a sharing, an excuse to gather around a table, to take part inan exchange of food and ideas, to listen and to receive with grace what is offered.
This project really began several years ago when I became seduced by the intense yellow of spring dandelions. I picked every one which grew on my lawn and laid out the flowers in rows on my studio floor trying to preserve the yellow colour. But the idea was flawed since nature is transient and cannot be controlled, the yellow flowers withered, faded, turned white, shed their seeds, stalks shrivelled and died. I began to question the popular definition of a weed being in the ‘wrong’ place and to wonder if perhaps this attitude towards weeds was a reflection of man’s own fragility.
Even though it has been suggested that it might be interpreted in this way, there is no intended biblical reference to the project, although embedded at its core lies the possibility of a multiple interpretation. ‘Last Supper’ was me, wondering whether if this really WAS the last meal we could ever have, and if like our ancestors, we WERE dependent upon weeds for food, would this be a celebration or a free for all?
What is a weed? A trite popular definition is “a plant in the wrong place,” but “what is the ‘right’ place,” and, “anyway it all depends what you mean by a weed. How, why and where we classify plants as undesirable, reflects our ceaseless attempts to draw boundaries between nature and culture, wildness and domestication.”
‘Civilized man’ has always tried to make an order of wildness by imposing taboos, boundaries, laws. Metaphorically perhaps, ‘weeds’ reside in this territory of wildness, beyond the ordered enclosure of a civilised society. Lawless, with no respect for territorial boundaries, weeds are resilient and subversive, and able to diversify and colonize, they ‘use multiple strategies for getting their own way,’ thriving in the wastelands and on the edges of civilization.
This project is suggesting “turn, and look again.” Perhaps the weed deserves our respect, perhaps there is a beauty unseen, and perhaps a weed is simply ‘a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.’ Existing before earliest man, they were a rich source of food and medicine which sustained our ancestors for centuries.
Weeds give something back. Land denuded of its natural vegetation will eventually turn to desert. Environmentalists stress that earth with no plants quickly dries out and becomes impoverished. Weeds clothe bare earth, protect and nurture the areas that man has scarred and ‘made war’ on. Living on the edges and between territories, these outsiders adapt and evolve in order to force change and enrich ‘cultivated’ areas with a multi-cultural diversity.
Like nature, Last Supper is constantly evolving and changing. The outcome is unpredictable, influenced by the choice of food in the wild at the beginning of September this year, who will come to dine, and who is willing to participate. Also like nature, it is transient, will be over in an hour, and like the weeds we shall be eating, it will be just what it is.
We should celebrate. Let’s have fun.
radiclexchanges 
Leave a comment