Food and community have been tethered to one another for as long as we have been on the planet, forming societies around the activities of hunting and gathering, building settlements on the banks of rivers to fish from and fertile land to sow with seeds.
Aberdeen was built around the Mercat Cross at the Castlegate – historically a place where market booths would be located and stallholders would meet to discuss their business; where women would buy their fish and potatoes to take home to
their families for supper.
Sharing a meal is integral to the making and maintaining of our relationships – when we want to reconnect with a loved one we suggest dinner, often spending hours sourcing ingredients, carefully preparing and cooking to plan, tasting as we go to make sure things are just right.
Carla Smith’s solo show SUGO, which opened to the public this past Saturday at the Look Again Project Space on St Andrews Street, articulately serves us such ideas of care, nourishment and connection through food.
Carla graduated from Aberdeen’s Gray’s School of Art in 2022 with a degree in contemporary art practice. The exhibition at Look Again is an accumulation of work made at art workshop peacock & the worm over the course of a year-long graduate artist residency programme, awarded to Carla at her degree show.
SUGO builds upon the artist’s degree show work, which explored similar themes of how love and care are channelled through food. The exhibition is one that invites a level of close intimacy from the audience.
Recipes and memories are equally fallible to changing over time
Upstairs, delicately patterned tiles adorn the walls, carefully arranged in an order that points to a wider motif throughout the show. On closer inspection, visitors will see that these patterns are, in fact, minute photographs, careful drawings of working hands and kitchen utensils, handwritten words – only visible when seen up close.
Downstairs, the atmosphere is perhaps even more intimate, as guests are invited into the artist’s home to watch while her grandmother prepares a meal for the family. Visitors gather round the screen like a kitchen table and, over the course of the film, look on as Nonna finely chops garlic, peels roasted peppers from their charred skins, and grills thinly sliced aubergine.
The soft score of the footage (realised by sonic artist Saoirse Horne) features sizzling, stirring, boiling, grating and chopping – it makes Nonna’s actions feel rhythmic and meditative, like a dance that everyone can tell she has performed countless times before.
Carla’s mother plays the role of kneader, mixing egg with flour and reshaping, pulling, stretching and squashing until the ingredients form a smooth dough, which she then feeds through a machine over and over until it is rolled into sheets of fresh pasta.
The cooking of the meal is a collaborative, symbiotic family affair, one which it is hard not to feel a part of as we drift in and out clouds of steam that rise above the simmering pots.
Once cooked (very slowly and over a low heat) the sauce can be bottled and kept for months at a time in the back of the cupboard, ready for when the time calls for something rich and reliable
Sugo, from which the exhibition gets its name, is the base of many Italian dishes and provides the artist with a direct, tangible line to her heritage. It is a sauce of few ingredients: tomatoes, onion, garlic, perhaps some salt to taste, and a pinch of fragrant dried herbs. Once cooked (very slowly and over a low heat) the sauce can be bottled and kept for months at a time in the back of the cupboard, ready for when the time calls for something rich and reliable.
The film, and the exhibition it is a part of, similarly work to preserve. Recipes and memories are equally fallible to changing over time as they are passed to new hands, and stories are told with different tongues to fresh ears. Each small and subtle change is a personal mark left by the last individual; recipes and tales shift as they adapt to fit new needs, new people, new environments.
- SUGO is on until September 17 at the Look Again Project Space, 32 St Andrews Street, Aberdeen
Rachael Gemmell is a contemporary artist and graduate of Gray’s School of Art who lives and works in Aberdeen