Still, Life

Joe Sweeney
2021
Portrait
Still, Life: Joe Sweeney
Publisher: Cob Gallery
Dimensions: 250 x 200mm
Pages: 196
£ 35.00

Still, Life. is a cookbook by British artist Joe Sweeney.  

 

The book meditates on both the daily restrictions of the 2020 pandemic and tradition of still life in art.

 

Contrasted within Still, Life. is Sweeney’s personal experience of domestic isolation and his photographic ballad to his native London, a city under lockdown. 

 

The artist’s candid iPhone photography of handwritten signs by absent shopkeepers in Brixton merge with his series of ceramics.

 

Works staged to subvert the aesthetics and symbols of traditional still life painting.

 

The recipes use local market ingredients. Their simplicity designed to encourage culinary self-sufficiency, and perhaps even rehabilitate your take away addiction.

 

“Amongst all this uncertainty one thing is for sure…almost any dish in this book will eventually find its way between two slices of bread.” – Joe Sweeney