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Art and food to tantalize the senses

artists

7 August 2009

I love art and food and, in August, Alana Kennedy combines the two.

Alana Kennedy's installation, "Tormentate I Sensi", muses on immortality, mythology and epicurean delicacies to "tantalize the senses" and richly combines this mystery with painting.

This dining room named after Marsilio Ficino, the 15th century Florentine philosopher who ignited the cultural revolution which elevated dining to an art form (and together with his translations of classical antiquity), fed and elevated the minds and status of "a painter" into the realm of an artist.

In 2009, the artist continues her improvisations on art and epicure... following "The Painted Gardens of a Honey Empress" (2007), "L'Oignon" (2005), and "Domestic Bliss" and "Jelly" (2004). Alana Kennedy's recent painting cycle, "The Garden of the Hesperides", in dark sumptuous grounds, capture floral studies inspired from the dark flower field foreground of Botticelli's "Primavera".

Also known during the Renaissance as "The Garden of the Hesperides", these paintings both define and hang on the walls of the dining room, which is a furnished installation with Kate Rohde's divine frenzy of faux Italianate creation, where within is juxtaposed Mark Chapman's bespoke interpretation of a 15th century Florentine philosophers' table.

Alana Kennedy with two precociously talented young women from the local Melbourne epicurean realm, Sophie Cookes and Nicole De Bono of Cookes Food, are offering menus for private dinners and soirées (by appointment only). For information about reservations to dine visit the Chapman & Bailey website. Music Salons in association with the Composers Club will present Sunday Salons. Information about reservations is available from the same website.