Kirsha Kaechele, an artist and curator from Hobart’s Mona museum, will be discussing her new book and exhibition Eat the Problem at Riverbend Books on Monday 25 March. She will be in conversation with Griffith University’s Bill Platz.
Eat the Problem is a surrealist compendium of food and art from Mona. More than 544 decadent pages long it comprises a series of recipes using invasive species both real and surreal and focuses on transforming flaw into feature. It features the contributions of artists whose work is in Mona’s permanent collection, as well as noted chefs, writers, scientists and philosophers from around the world. Along with meditations on eating, destroying, or transforming invasive species into art, Eat the Problem includes recipes for life in the form of poetry, essays, scatological musings and interviews.
Alongside the launch of Kirsha’s book is her exhibition Eat the Problem which will be showcased at the Hobart Mona Museum from 13 April to 2 September. Eat the Problem is a highly performative exhibition that will engage visitors in various acts of transformation. After entering the gallery space in complete darkness, visitors will encounter the world’s largest glockenspiel illuminated in the full colour spectrum. The glockenspiel provides an introduction to the world of cymatics, the movement of matter created by sound waves. The glockenspiel sculpture will also serve as a grand dining table for a series of immersive feasts, celebrating ritual and community. Using invasive species such as cane toad and sea urchin, the degustation menu will be developed by Mona’s executive chef Vince Trim. The dishes will progress from white to black through the entire colour spectrum. During the brown course, visitors may experience the effects of the ‘brown note.’ Every element of the feasts are artworks designed to surprise and provoke. Alongside the feasts, visitors can undergo transformative healing sessions including sound baths, bodywork, infrared heat and cryogenic treatments.
Kirsha says, “Eat the Problem brings to life the practice of turning shit into gold through a delightfully experimental and confronting, but outrageously glamorous, feast for the senses. Visitors taste colour, feel sound vibrations and participate in movement and music. By eating their way through the experience they leave transformed and inspired, with a deepened appreciation of system based sustainable thinking”.
