The kitchen prior to the performance.... a sort of contemporary still-life– an assemblage of items found in most kitchens .... These are not, however, a random collection of items but are all chosen for their practical value in the making of the soup and their personal significance to the artist. The linen tablecloth belongs to her mother, the apron is a souvenir from a holiday in Seville, the pan was a gift from her grandparents and the knives, peeler, ladle and jars of seasonings come from Jessica’s own kitchen. But just looking at this space is deficient. We are accustomed to privileging sight and the gaze in art historical and critical analysis. This is, however, something which Soup Work plans to disrupt by engaging the other senses ... inviting the visitor to the space to not be simply a viewer but to become an active participant in the performance, smelling and tasting the soup and bread and even taking the recipe home.

Exhibition spaces don’t normally have kitchens.... The gallery space is typically the home of high culture, clinically clean and relatively free from the clutter of our everyday lives. Soup Work, however, plans to expose the poetics and politics of making and preparing food by introducing the physically low (the flesh of the chicken, the onion still covered with soil) into the culturally high space of the gallery. The idea of relocating a domestic space into the gallery confuses the normal boundaries that exist between the artist’s home, studio and exhibition space, blurring the distinctions between that which is normally seen as public and private. I see Soup Work as an act of alchemy – transforming not only a few simple ingredients into a tasty and nutritious soup but also the gallery into an experimental space in which artist and viewer can both explore ideas where art production and the acts of everyday life are brought together.

We all need to nourish our bodies to survive. However, the decision to prepare food in the gallery space questions these acts as simply biological necessity and exposes the relatively simple task of making soup as something loaded with social and cultural ritual and symbolism. The kitchen — that space associated typically with the home, and particularly with the mother, the nerve centre of domestic life — is a loaded territory, usually seen as the woman’s sphere of power. It is a place, however, that has often been denied social status. The kitchen is not though simply a room in a house, a neutral location, or a ‘frozen scene for human activity’. It is not just an inert location but is socially produced*. To make the kitchen the site of artistic performance.... is to recognise it as a site of production of meaning, significance and value. In donning her apron and serving chicken soup, and being hospitably to all who cross the threshold into the gallery space, Jessica will explore the stereotypical image of the Jewish woman, not only successful in her professional life but a domestic goddess and angel in the house – always busy cleaning and cooking, making sure that everyone is well fed and happy.