Photos: Zan Wimberley
Sometimes when I feel empty, I eat a second breakfast.
Laetitia Olivier-Gargano
Gallery 2
view the roomsheet
take a 3D virtual tour
Sometimes when I feel empty, I eat a second breakfast. is a sculptural response to the everyday. In 2019, Laetitia Olivier-Gargano undertook a research trip to Japan to learn how their iconic fake food displays are made – since then, she has been creating “hyper-surrealistic” resin cast sculptures combining food, plants and an odd sense of storytelling. Delicately painted plastic forms look good enough to eat, but utterly uncanny in their presentation. This visual feast playfully incites both a sense of wonder and unease. Using organic shapes, flora and everyday objects to draw on emotions and memories, her incredibly intricate sculptures explore mixed cultures and identities as well as sharing the wonderful, the awful and the often hilarious combinations that can arise when we play with our food.
To compliment the exhibition, an online project was created during Melbourne’s lockdown in 2020. The choose-your-own-adventure style website acts as a way to view the thought processes and inspiration for her current body of work. Visit the website on your desktop browser.
This project was assisted by The Freedman Foundation Travelling Scholarship for Emerging Artists, administered by the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA). This project is supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.