Tatton Park Biennial: Sited Commissions
LISA CHEUNG will develop new work based in the Kitchen Garden, suggestive of the Chinese ‘Kitchen God’. The piece will be both sculptural and performative - a growing gown of plants, fruit and vegetables that will ultimately be worn and used by a performer.
Kitchen Goddess
Kitchen Goddess is inspired by an eclectic mix of scarecrows, ‘Ladies of the Manor’, Mother Earth and the Chinese ‘Kitchen God’. A process and time-based installation that buds, blossoms and comes alive through the length of the Biennial, she is at once welcoming and warning, barren and bountiful, and, in the end, a selfless provider to all.
Lisa Cheung’s Goddess towers over the vegetable plots in Tatton Park’s walled Kitchen Garden. The frame was installed ‘naked’, but over the spring and summer months flowering and fruiting vegetables continue to grow over and around her, creating the fabric of her ball gown, body and head. The plants have been selected and cared for, trained and maintained by the expert hands of volunteer gardeners from Knutsford Allotments and Coppice Road Allotments (Poynton), as well as Tatton Park’s gardeners.
The work is an acknowledgement not just of the bounty of tamed nature, but also of its end use. The training and care lavished by gardeners on the Goddess will ultimately lead to her demise in a performance in August in which her efforts will be harvested and eaten in a celebratory lunch.
Kitchen Goddess was fabricated by Scrappy Creations (Horsham), with the assistance of Philip Swift.
Biography
Lisa Cheung is a visual artist based in London. She was born in Hong Kong, grew up in Toronto, and returned to Hong Kong from 1992 –1996 before relocating to London to study a MA at Goldsmiths College from 1996-98. She has shown in the UK including her first solo show at Gasworks Gallery, London (2001), Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester (2000, 2003). She has participated in group exhibitions at Spacex Gallery, Exeter (2004), Firstsite Gallery, Colchester (2005), Plymouth Museum and Art Gallery (2006, 2007), and A Foundation, Liverpool (2007), as well as internationally in Madrid, Israel, Seoul, and Toronto.
She has participated in many artist-in-residency programmes including Camden Arts Centre (2002), Rio de Janeiro as part of the Triangle Arts Exchange (2003). She is currently a resident at Acme Firestation Studios (2005-2010).
Lisa is interested in art as a social space, taking as her inspiration everyday life and people. Her practice encompasses communal dinners, lighting installations, limited edition chinaware, mobile kitchens and performances. Her work is site specific, situated in museums such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, art galleries, disused shop fronts, café counters, council estate parking lots, army bases and gardens.