Making and breaking bread with Eleanor Zurowski

Eleanor Zurowski lives and works on unceded Gadigal land. They are interested in labour relations, the ways in which people gather and how diverse forms of knowledge can be shared in these instances. Their work is often collaborative and explores how research is a collective and expansive practice. They are drawn to the materiality and socio-cultural symbolisms of foodstuff, with a particular love for bread.

This conversation took place in March 2021 on the occasion of Eleanor’s Firstdraft exhibition A call to rise.

Interview by Hannah Jenkins, Co-Director, Firstdraft, 2020–21.

“Bread as a subject is as flexible as its materiality. It’s a touchstone to so many other things and allows people to focus on how they relate to themselves, others and the earth.”

Isabel Samaha man’oushe هشوقنم ,2021 painted sign, saj oven in courtyard and Sitti’s tablecloth as window covering, installation view (opening), A call to rise, 2021, curated by Eleanor Zurowski, Firstdraft, Sydney. Photo: Zan Wimberley. Courtesy the artist.

Hannah Jenkins: The theme of bread and bread-making as a process/material/metaphor/history has been a recurring theme in your work. Can you tell us about other iterations of this theme and how ‘A call to rise’ fits into this work? I’m thinking in particular of Voiceworks ‘How To Get A Rise’ which I love!)

Eleanor Zurwoski: Simply put, I think bread allows a point of access into artworks. Bread as a subject is as flexible as its materiality. It’s a touchstone to so many other things and allows people to focus on how they relate to themselves, others and the earth. I have a writing practice where I alter text from recipes, looking at the potential erotics around the language of bread and cooking more broadly. I’ve similarly explored this in a piece that I wrote (published in Rabbit Poetry in 2019) that looks at the Instagrammer @breadfaceblog. 

I’ve also worked with bread through other arts based projects, a recent one being That Feeling of Being Kneaded that took place in August 2019 at Tributary Projects in Canberra. This work involved the care and maintenance of a sourdough starter in the gallery space over the two week period of the show, where audiences were invited to take some home and gallery staff were responsible for maintaining the starter. For this work I collaborated with a food writer and homebaker I found online, Bryan Martin, who lives locally to the Canberra area.

Eleanor Zurowski, A call to rise, mindmap WIP

Over ongoing email exchanges and phone calls in the lead up to the show we developed a set of care instructions and a sourdough recipe for Bryan’s starter. The project aimed to contribute to a community of bread making and sharing within the local area and establish new networks of care that began in, but extended outside of an arts space. The original iteration of the work was made in collaboration with Bryan Martin, Sunny Lei who designed the distributable recipe and care cards and Max Whelan-Young who made the breadboard that the work was displayed on. It was really cool that a few weeks later someone who had taken a bit of the starter wanted to do another version of the work in their group show, The Gap at Tributary Projects and so fed their starter enough to be the one that could be shared. I like the idea that works can have endless iterations.

A call to rise was the culmination of a lot of thinking and research into bread over the past few years, thinking about its intimacies and its potentials. Curation felt like a great way to bring different voices/relationships into the conversation and as a means to explore this research in both a physical (exhibition) and digital (publication) space.

Maike Hemmers, The fat feeling, 2020 dimensions variable, fabric cushions filled with Australian grown wheat and satin tags printed with text, installation view (detail), A call to rise, 2021, curated by Eleanor Zurowski, Firstdraft, Sydney. Photo: Zan Wimberley. Courtesy the artist.

Isabel Samaha man’oushe هشوقنم ,2021 painted sign, saj oven in courtyard and Sitti’s tablecloth as window covering, installation view (opening), A call to rise, 2021, curated by Eleanor Zurowski, Firstdraft, Sydney. Photo: Zan Wimberley. Courtesy the artist.

Isabel Samaha man’oushe هشوقنم ,2021 painted sign, saj oven in courtyard and Sitti’s tablecloth as window covering, installation view (opening), A call to rise, 2021, curated by Eleanor Zurowski, Firstdraft, Sydney. Photo: Zan Wimberley. Courtesy the artist.

“Resistance isn’t always a grand gesture, but is a process and one that often takes time and collaboration.”

HJ: How has this theme evolved or developed for you over time? What was your curatorial rationale with A call to rise, in particular? How did you go about matching artists and planning the show?

EZ: I love hearing how people relate to bread and being met with the opportunity to make people not only think, but feel differently about it. I was doing a lot of reading and research around bread riots and protests and thinking about how bread has consistently been a symbol and sustenance of resistance(s). The show brought together artists that I both knew and that I had distantly been crushing on, that shared in some way (not always through their arts practice) an affinity with bread making.

I liked the idea that the works in the show weren’t directly about bread, but rather what it touches in peoples lives, how it informs relationships of care and communication, our understanding of time, labour and endurance and how resistance isn’t always a grand gesture, but is a process and one that often takes time and collaboration. It was important for me that there be a publication accompanying the exhibition, to contextualise the show more, offer resources and to depict in some small way the scale and force of bread globally. For the title, ‘A call to rise’ I was thinking about political uprisings, collective actions, bakers waking in the morning, phrases like ‘let’s get this bread’ or ‘the grind.’ It brought together these intricate and dynamic relationships that bread has to time, bodies and an ongoing sense of responsibility to something outside of yourself.

Eleanor Zurowski, That Feeling of Being Kneaded, mindmap WIP

HJ: Bread making had a big moment in 2020 – what are your thoughts on people staying home and making bread? Did this change the way you thought of your work at all?

EZ: I think bread making is an excellent skill to have and I think an experience of making it, particularly the sourdough style bread that was commonly made in 2020, gives you a lot more empathy and respect for those who do it as a trade. In saying this, I think the scope of bread in a wider social sphere is still so small. Sourdough is finicky and time consuming and often wasteful of resources when one is learning. I think bread making is a really considered practice and makes you think about time and the food that you eat really differently and often in generative ways, but bread doesn’t need to be hard to make to be good. Yeasted breads are delicious and breads like flatbreads are my ultimate go to and take a maximum ten minutes to prepare.

It’s also really important to recognise the privilege of time and access to resources that many people had in 2020 that allowed them to make bread, when on the other sides of the world bread was scarce, or its resources being threatened or hunger already present. Bread is inherently tied to class/economics and I wish this was more of a discussion when it seemed to be ‘trending’ last year. Perhaps this is something to explore more acutely in future works. End of the day though, I’m just happy people care (maybe) a little bit more about bread.

Vistaria Nakamarra Ross, ’Lukarrara Jukurrpa (Desert Fringe-rush Seed Dreaming)', 46 × 30 cm, painting on canvas in Tasmanian oak frame, installation view, A call to rise, 2021, curated by Eleanor Zurowski, Firstdraft, Sydney. Photo: Zan Wimberley. Courtesy the artist.

HJ: More broadly, how has the last year been for you? How has your lifestyle and artmaking been affected by 2020? How did you come to be curator?

EZ: I think curating is an extension of a lot of things that artists, and people more broadly, are already doing. Thinking and reflecting on ideas, drawing threads, bringing people together into spaces to enter dialogues or to think about things differently. I spend a lot of time reading, walking and eating, all of which I consider to be research –and curating is just a way for those practices to be shared with others. It’s a lot more of logistics than it’s made out to be. Lots of emails, meetings etc but when those things are with excellent people and about interesting ideas it makes it a whole lot easier to do.

It was pretty difficult to stay motivated last year, but I was lucky to have family and friends always there for encouragement. I am an avid mind mapper and love finding relationships between things so I’ve always thought of curating as a way of mind mapping in a physical space. I’m still learning a lot and always will be, but I’m really grateful to have had the trust of the eight artists in this show who shared their ideas, time and work.

Francesca Zak, Thumb pressed to the Petri, 2021, graphite on paper, clay, ink, acrylic paint, dehydrated sourdough starter, beeswax and resin 27 × 24 × 4 cm, installation view (opening), A call to rise, 2021, curated by Eleanor Zurowski, Firstdraft, Sydney. Photo: Zan Wimberley. Courtesy the artist.

Laura Wilson, With Inordinate Heaviness, 2017 HD video, 3 minutes 7 seconds, installation view, A call to rise, 2021, curated by Eleanor Zurowski, Firstdraft, Sydney. Photo: Zan Wimberley. Courtesy the artist.

“I think curating is an extension of a lot of things that artists, and people more broadly, are already doing. Thinking and reflecting on ideas, drawing threads, bringing people together into spaces to enter dialogues or to think about things differently.”

Maike Hemmers, Excerpt from 'No kitchen ever belongs to me,' 2020 152 × 55 cm, green wall vinyl, installation view (opening), A call to rise, 2021, curated by Eleanor Zurowski, Firstdraft, Sydney. Photo: Zan Wimberley. Courtesy the artist.

“It brought together these intricate and dynamic relationships that bread has to time, bodies and an ongoing sense of responsibility to something outside of yourself.”

Eleanor Zurowski, That Feeling of Being Kneaded, installation view, Tributary Projects.

HJ: Who or what are you listening to, watching, reading? How do you stay connected – or how do you disconnect – in these times?

EZ: I listen to a lot, a lot of music, mostly mixes made by talented friends. Some artists I have on rotation currently are Rydeen, Slow Burn, GUMMI, Outhouse, bleus, and Cloud Cover. I also love trashy TV, so have been watching a lot of that. My housemate and I also obsessively watched Search Party together. Over the past year I’ve also been slowly tracking down Cheryl Dunye’s films and really enjoying those. I’ve been reading Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, Ornamental by Juan Cárdenas, Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky and just recently the new Rosa Press pamphlets!

In the context of the exhibition, I was reading/watching/listening to a variety of publications which are linked in the exhibition catalogue here. They include Aaron Eddens’ ‘White science and indigenous maize: the racial logics of the Green Revolution’, 2019, The Journal of Peasant Studies; Aaron Bobrow-Strain’s White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf, 2012; Alecia Wood’s, ‘Were Indigenous Australians the world’s first bakers?,’ 2016, SBS; Amira Mittermaier’s ‘BREAD, FREEDOM, SOCIAL JUSTICE: The Egyptian Uprising and a Su Khidma,’ 2014, Futures of Neoliberalism; Amy Halloran’s The New Bread Basket, 2015; Andrew Whitley’s Bread Matters, 2006; Antonella Pasqualone’s ‘Traditional at breads spread from the Fertile Crescent: Production process and history of baking systems’ 2018, Journal of Ethnic Foods; Cambridge Archaeology Field Group, Querns and quern stones 2019; Dayna Evans’ ‘New-World Sourdough Is Hardly New’ 2020, Taste; Ferris Jabr, ‘Bread is Broken’ 2015, New York Times; Harriet Friedmann, ‘Feeding the Empire: The Pathologies of Globalized Agriculture’ 2005, Socialist Register: The Empire Reloaded; Jose Ciro Martinez, ‘LEAVENED APPREHENSIONS: BREAD SUBSIDIES AND MORAL ECONOMIES IN HASHEMITE JORDAN, 2018, Int J Middle East Studies; Jose Ciro Martinez’s ‘Bread Is Life’ Middle East Report 272 (Fall 2014); Josh K. Elliott’s ‘Man bakes sourdough from 4,500-year-old Egyptian yeast’ 2019, Global News; Katie Gourly’s baking for biodiversity: a tiny book about grains 2019; Lorena Allam and Isabella Moore ‘Bruce Pascoe and the rst dancing grass harvest in 200 years’ 2020, The Guardian; Patagonia’s ‘Black Duck Foods is sowing seeds for First Nations food sovereignty’ 2020, Roaring Journals; Peter Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread 1892; Qura Tul Ain Riaz’s ‘Investigating the changes in quality of historical and modern Australian wheat varieties’ 2017, Conference: Australasian Grain Science Conference (AGSA); Ruth Potts and Molly Conisbee’s ‘The politics of bread’ 2014, The Red Pepper; Sarah DiGregorio’s The Future of Bread is All About the Past; Scott Cutler Shershow’s Bread 2016; Stephen Yafa, Grain of Truth, 2015.

I’ve also been listening to a lost of podcasts, including: Biological Farming Round Table, ‘Episode 15: Building a local food market’; Deep Winter Agrarian Gathering 2019, ‘Local Grain Economies and How to Get There’; Farmerama, ‘Cereal’ and ‘Who feeds us?’; Gastropod, ‘White vs. Wheat: The Food Fight of the Centuries’; Heritage Radio Network, ‘Modernist Breadcrumbs’; Middle East Law & Governance Podcast, ‘Episode 9: The Everyday Politics of Bakeries in Jordan with Dr. José Ciro Martínez’; Point of Origin, ‘Episode 27: Beyond the Wheat’; and Rise Up! The Baker Podcast with Mark Dyck, ‘Baker and lover of bakeries’.

Some videos I have been watching are ‘Feeding unrest in Cairo: The politics of bread’, Aljazeera, 2016; ‘Native Grains: From Paddock to Plate’, Faculty of Science, University of Sydney, 2020; ‘Unbroken Ground | A New Old Way to Grow Food’, Patagonia, 2016; ‘Rainbow Serpent, Dark Emu: Black Seeds — Unveiling Precolonial Aboriginal Agriculture – Bruce Pascoe’, 2019; Rose Street Pantry: Season 1 Episode 6: Woodstock Flour, Rose Street Pantry TV, 2020; grAINZ Festival, 2019; and ‘Simple Ground, Grain Harvest: Threshing, Winnowing, and Eating Rye’, 2016.

Isabel Samaha man’oushe هشوقنم ,2021 painted sign, saj oven in courtyard and Sitti’s tablecloth as window covering, installation view (opening), A call to rise, 2021, curated by Eleanor Zurowski, Firstdraft, Sydney. Photo: Zan Wimberley. Courtesy the artist.

HJ: Do you have a favourite or particularly memorable exhibition that you saw at Firstdraft, and why?

EZ: I really loved History House by Thea Perkins in 2018, which created such an intentional space and experimented with installation and painting in way I haven’t experienced before. It was like peeping into a dolls house you weren’t allowed into. 

Other standouts include Do You Know This Feeling?, curated by Sebastian Henry-Jones; Score Club | Club Score by Alexandra Spence, MP Hopkins, Megan Alice Clune & Andrew Fedorovitch; Beben y Beben, by Francesca Zak; and Heavy Time/s by Kalanjay Dhir.

“I’ve always thought of curating as a way of mind mapping in a physical space. ”

Laura Wilson, With Inordinate Heaviness, 2017 HD video, 3 minutes 7 seconds, video still.

HJ: Is there anything that I haven't asked you that you'd like to talk about or give space to?

EZ: The publication supporting the exhibition, designed by Sunny Lei, which can be accessed here. It contains hyperlinks to different organisations, research groups, and independent Australian flour mills and suppliers, some of which I’ve outlined below.

Organisations and Research groups include: Black Duck Foods, Australian Demeter Biodynamic, Washington State University Breadlab GRDC, The Bread & Butter Project, Functional Grains Centre, Bread on Earth, Grains and Nutrition Council, The Mills Archive, and Flatbread Society. 

Independent Australian flour mills and suppliers include: Artisan Grains, Berkelo, Burrum Biodynamics, Eden Valley, Kindred Organics, Four Leaf Milling, Powlett Hill, Rock Paper Flour, Small World Bakery, Spencer Organics, Tuerong Farm, Whispering Pines Organic, and Woodstock.

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