There’s something in the air, or is it in the oven- food has been a trend all over clothes (why are we so obsessed with tomatoes, and lemons, and canned fish?) that is now bleeding into the art world. For me (and most of us) food has shaped my life.An unconventional (read: international) upbringing exposed me not only to art at a young age, but a wide variety of foods. I grew up counting down the days towards meals- Canadian Thanksgiving (immediate family, Mum’s brûléed sweet potatoes), Christmas Eve (California, Auntie Lynn’s kielbasa hors d'oeuvre), Christmas (flaming plum pudding), Easter (ham), and Mother’s Day (Les Fougeres’ house salad). It was these moments at tables that made up the year more than the holidays themselves. In so much of the art I’ve seen lately, these links have been reflected back to me. Cooking and art are labours of love, they feed us, and often don’t get the appreciation the time and effort deserve. 

Convergence: A Spatial Negotiation at Blindside brings together 23 masters students from RMIT across Arts Management, Fine Art, and Photography. It certainly is a spatial negotiation to fit the work of 15 artists into one room of the gallery, and even more of a spatial negotiation to fit their friends and family in for the opening I attended last night.

Not to be a hater, but hearing that the artists for Blindside’s current Debut XXI exhibition were drawn from recent art school graduates, I didn’t have particularly high expectations. Maybe that’s just me being jaded from my own experience at art school, especially with our grad show that never really was (2020 lockdown grad here 😬). BUT! I wasn’t just pleasantly surprised by Debut XXI, but I was actually incredibly taken with the whole show. Curators Emeline Robinson-Shaw and Veronica Charmont have brought together work by seven artists and created an exhibition that not only works seamlessly, but even reflects back glowingly on art schools for shaping these emerging artists.