2024 DOWN TO EARTH : Changing the way we eat

By Barney Pau, Francesca Anfossi and Huma Kabakci for e5 Bakehouse

An immersive exploration of diverse grain-growing practices. This multi-sensory experience will delve into the critical role grains play in our sustenance, highlighting both their importance and the environmental challenges associated with their cultivation.

Francesca has made a new series of ceramic plates, platters and spoons specifically responding to the theme of the dinner, focused on the cycle from seed to plate.
Hand made in terracotta with cut-out shapes of vegetables, mushroom and seeds, offering a visual and tactile celebration of agriculture and seed cultivation.

The immersive dining experience with an uniquely curated menu by Barney and project management by Huma, where the presentation of food on these plates and platters enhances the thematic connection between what we eat and how it is grown. Diners are invited to appreciate the flavours and textures of their meals by using Anfossi’s sensorial spoons, but also hoping to appreciate the agricultural heritage and effort that bring food to their tables.

2023-2024 A TAVOLA CON ROCHESTER SQUARE

Museo della Ceramica Savona

Six international artists have gone to Western Liguria, historically an important hub of international gatherings, to offer the local community a series of workshops and laboratories focused on ceramics and artistic experimentation. From Aug. 28th to Sept. 7th, 2023, the six artists and ceramicists, Francesca Anfossi, Milan Tarascas, Ewelina Bartkowska, Lyson Marchessault, Paulina Michnowska and Lex Franchi have been hosted by the Museum of Ceramics in Savona. This has been possible thanks to the synergy created with Anfossi, born and raised in Liguria and co-founder in 2015 of the Rochester Square project: a dynamic studio dedicated to socially engaged projects, set on an original and successful ecological vision of ceramic art.

The connection with the territory and its attributes was one of the main aspects of the artistic residency in Liguria. The workshops organized together with the Museum of Ceramics in Savona led artists and participants into the woods of the western hinterland to study and quarry the natural red clays, which were then used experimentally in the laboratory, on the sandy shores of the mouth of the Sansobbia creek, to model plaster casts directly on the sand of the beach, in the manufactures of local artisans and on the lathes of the Municipal School of Ceramics in Albisola.

Inheriting the social and aggregative interpretation of the pottery making carried on in the Rochester Square kiln, the project that took place in Savona involved on some occasions the Caritas of Savona. Some workshops were also aimed at children and teens as part of summer art camps curated by the Museum’s Educational Department, demonstrating the versatility of the ceramic techniques, at once sophisticated and humble, artifact and natural, extraordinary and ordinary, like eating and being together. Indeed, according to the founders, associates and participants of Rochester Square, food is the key element in transforming places and situations into an engine for the community social life.

2019-2020 RECIPES FOR A BOOK

Whitechapel Gallery/ Residency with 2 Tower Hamlet primary schools

Whitechapel Gallery invited artist Francesca Anfossi to participants to engage collaboratively in experimental material exploration in clay, cooking and collaging  to explore themes of cultural identity, creative expression and community.

In autumn 2019 we will launch a project with a group of year 6 pupils and their parents/carers, working together with Francesca to explore the exhibitions to inspire ways for them to tell their own stories through art. This group will then collaborate with a secondary school, to help develop confidence as they approach the transition from primary to secondary school and to work alongside KS4 and 5 students in their art rooms in the school to learn about their experiences of studying creative subjects. This project will not only allow for the development of creative skills and knowledge, but also provide clear pathways for progression and a critical understanding of the value of the visual arts.

Exhibition, autumn 2019: Anna Maria Maiolino: Making Love Revolutionary.

The exhibition offers the chance to experience and engaging range of media and approaches to art making.

While using  3 type colour clays ,  plaster and basic cooking igredients , Francesca  asked them to make simple shape with simple hand gesture , thinking about the motion of rolling , turning , pooring ,  and repeating pleasurable gesture to be able to replecates shapes and appreciate the pleasure of making without the pressure of achiving. By simple notion of making and engaging wth eachother the result was an incredible familiarity of these gesture and merging different cuture identity to create a simple yet instruction.

2021 A CORNISH BANQUET

Whitegold, St Austell

is supported by the Whitegold Project in St Austell,  is in collaboration with Cornwall Neighbourhoods for Change and will culminate in a community feast as part of the Whitegold Festival in 2021

This project has started with a series of interactions with the local community in St Austell of CN4C. The participants were invited to send me any pictures of their favourite food, recipes or ingredients.

I used the images to make a collage like print in clay on paper, which they were sent back to them in the format of clay prints to be inspired by the next step.

In June 2021 i runned a series of online workshop during which the participants produced their own ceramic plate, based on the design of the clay print they previously received. Finally, the legacy of our collaboration will be celebrated on the occasion of the festival in 2021, in the form of a convivial outdoor picnic.

A unique picnic blankets based on my ongoing conversation and exchange of images was made to celebrate conviviality during The Whitegold Festival in June. The blanket will be donated to Cornwall Neighbourhoods for Change for future events. As such, everything produced will remain in St Austell and its surroundings and form part of a broader legacy initiated by Whitegold.

Final celebratory day of cooking together and eating on their hand amde plates and the blanket made with their designs.