FOOD & DRINK SUPPORTED BY
TASTEFUL ART
Scotland’s designated Year of Food and Drink 2015 has been followed by the Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design 2016. Gabriella Bennett discovers that there’s plenty of overlap between the two
I ncreasing numbers of Scottish artists, architects, animators and designers are choosing food not just as their inspiration, but also their medium. Some are swapping paintbrushes for paring knives,
while others are using food as a way to drive social change.
Bakery47, located on an inauspicious street on Glasgow’s southside, is the brainchild of Sam and Anna Luntley who respectively swapped their jobs in a gallery and as an artist’s assistant to bake full-time. ‘We both decided that cooking, entertaining and providing experiences for others were what we liked best and what we wanted to do,’ explains Sam. ‘I love making bread and I love people coming in to enjoy what Anna and I make together. We see our bakery as our studio, where we create and play with ideas and methods in a similar way to how an artist might try new materials.’
Other food venues have drawn from the artistic skills of their owners, including Inver, a small west-coast bothy that serves new Nordic cuisine inspired by its proprietors’ time working in Noma (see panel). Glasgow’s Perspective Café uses the currency of food and drink as a way to bring art to a wider audience. Devised by Yasmin Soliman
(a recent graduate of photography from the University of the West of Scotland), it involves a series of events hosting temporary exhibitions, i lm showings and spoken-word nights. ‘As we’re hosting our events in the familiar and social backdrop of a café environment, we hope to welcome anyone and everyone,’ she says. ‘That opens up the possibility for the general public to walk in off the street and stumble upon our events; hopefully this encourages families, children and the older generation to participate too.’ Soil City, meanwhile, is a long-term scheme by Open Jar Collective, a trio of artists driven by community engagement, that aims to assess Glasgow’s soil with a series of mini-archaeological digs, clay collections and worm surveys. ‘Oral storytelling traditions, such as painting, sculpture and songs used to be essential ways of passing information from generation to generation,’ notes the group’s Clementine Sandison. ‘These are creative ways to communicate important messages about the seasons such as which wild plants were safe to eat and methods for preserving food. I hope to bring a little of the everyday rituals that surround food into my work.’
COLOURFUL PALATE Former animator Rob Latimer describes his journey to an Argyll restaurant via London and Noma
My qualii cation in illustration and graphic art led me into a career in animation, which I pursued in London for a decade with a company called Studio AKA. I loved living in London but I knew I couldn’t stay there forever. My partner Pam [Brunton] has been a chef for many years and we talked for a while about having a restaurant; then Pam got a job on
the Isle of Iona as a head chef and I worked front-of-house. We went on to work in restaurants like Noma and Fäviken, in northern Sweden, before returning to Scotland. We went up to Strathlachlan and saw Inver in spring 2015 and knew we had to go for it. My experience in Photoshop has helped with designing things like posters for the restaurant. We always try and do things that look decent: no Comic Sans. They key is not to try too hard, otherwise it looks contrived and that can be applied from table settings to the way we
display our specials. And, of course, what Pam comes up with in the kitchen is incredibly creative.
The restaurant has also had input from creative members of both our families. My sister, who is an interior designer specialising in restaurants, has just redesigned our bar area, and her husband, a joiner, built it. Pam’s dad is an architect and he has designed four bothies we plan to open as self-contained accommodation on a piece of land next to Inver. ■ inverrestaurant.co.uk
48 THE LIST 2 Jun–1 Sep 2016