Devon Projects, Huntly
The fish is on the fire in the outdoor clay oven built by Kawther Luay and Fionn Duffy for the final part of their yearlong exploration of food, foraging and hospitality as collective ritual and shared artistic act. It’s a blowy but sunny Sunday afternoon at Greenmyres, a sixty-three acre site run by Huntly Development Trust ten minutes outside Huntly in Aberdeenshire. More than twenty diner participants are seated at a long table in a covered outdoor shed, having already helped prepare the food the are about to share under Luay and Duffy’s guidance, be it as chef or ceramicist.
Recognising the performative nature of the experience, Luay has cast both herself and Duffy as well as assorted ingredients as characters in their mini epic, from the milk of Act 1 and the grain of Act 2, both presented earlier in the summer, to the third and final act, fired by clay.
With the foodstuffs sourced within a fifty-mile radius, the pots they are contained in have been made by Duffy as part of the project. A river of locally foraged clay running down the centre of the table invites diners to mould something of their own as the meal cooks beside them. Inbetween each course, Luay and Duffy read out poetic texts that point up the relationship between the culinary and the social.
By the end of the meal, the shared experience of packing fresh fish with seasoning and condiments as they are passed down the table has broken down formalities between people. A summer camp atmosphere prevails, as initially awkward small-talk between strangers opens up other connections, and a mini community is fleetingly formed before everyone departs en route to elsewhere.
All this was enabled by Deveron Projects, the Huntly based organisation founded more than a quarter of a century ago with the holistic premise that ‘The Town is the Venue’. With Huntly’s population currently standing at around four and half thousand, this makes Deveron’s activities more visible than they would be in a big city. Under director Natalia Palombo, who in 2021 picked up the baton from the founder of what was then Deveron Arts, Claudia Zeiske, long term artists’ residencies such as Luay’s have allowed projects such as The Gathering Table to breathe.
The afternoon of the third act began outside Square Deal, a community space and local resource taken over by Deveron in the town square. As participants gather, the natural distance between them already starts to fade with the collective knowledge of what they’ve signed up for. This too is part of Luay and Duffy’s play. By the time it has switched scenery following a short car ride out to Greenmyres, everyone is up for taking part. In this way, The Gathering Table is part of a wave of work over the last few years, in which audiences are no longer content to be passive spectators sitting in the dark, but want to help shape the experience.
What Luay and Duffy have done over the last year is take everyday actions we take for granted and transformed them into a Beuysian social sculpture that gives those actions a renewed significance. They have also enabled those taking part to invest more of their time in the things they are sharing, and recognise how, beyond the packets or tins bought from the corner shop or supermarket they might normally consume on plastic plates and served from department store pots, there are roots and back stories to how they are grown or crafted.
As The Gathering Table’s Act 3 meal ends, the seeds that have been planted within each participant leaves us nourished, but still hungry enough for the next encounter in a never-ending feast of the senses, and everything else besides.
Scottish Art News, July 2023
Ends
Comments