text - Source - a suspended ephemeral sculpture with living plants - © Lloyd Godman

Source - Text

As a space to install an ephemeral sculpture, the restaurant presents a stimulating challenge. . It is a location where we expect a heightened sensual experience, where our attention is directed to the delights of all that food can be within any given social context. Every dining experience presents a new and different sensation. Social interactions vary from romance and intimacy, casual dining, business engagements, to the group celebration of a joyous occasion. The restaurant encompasses a wide range of social rituals and discourse. As part of an ephemeral sculpture event organized by the local shire council, I was allocated Bridges Restaurant in Hustbridge.

Plants are often grown as part of the decor of a restaurant, but rarely linked as the foundation of our food source and the process of photosynthesis. The process of photosynthesis is like a fine, critical thread that invisibly suspends all our food and the dining experience before us.

As a location for the installation, the restaurant is ideal to represent the essential process of photosynthesis that is so integrally linked but overlooked during the dining experience.

My approach to the Nillumbik ephemeral sculpture in restaurants opportunity is to confront the audience with the crucial process of photosynthesis by growing food plants like beans, in pots on the plates of a dining setting.