Perfection Salad, Emily Hartley-Skudder and Judy Darragh

Opening 5pm, Wednesday 22 April

Perfection Salad invites a colourful, cross-generational duo to a Tupperware party: oil paintings by Emily Hartley-Skudder combined with sculptural assemblages by one of her art-heroes—the inimitable Judy Darragh.

Judy and Emily explore taste and consumer culture through the lens of objects we’re all addicted to—in particular, the plastics we now find ourselves drowning in. Both artists are avid collectors, and this accumulation of domestic plastics shapes their sensibilities and relationships to the wider world: a method of physically collecting ideas. Already immortal, these objects are granted a reprieve from landfill; re-arranged and re-evaluated as art, and twice-immortalised in oil paint.

While Judy now tries to recirculate many materials from her studio—back to the op shop they came from—Emily still struggles to let go. Blurring the boundaries of the high and low-brow in material culture, there’s no doubt these two artists will remain timelessly fashionable, albeit perhaps an acquired taste.

The exhibition title refers to a once revered Jell-O delicacy, popular in 1950s America. Invented in 1904, this suspended concoction of chopped cabbage, celery and red peppers ignited the savoury Jell-O’s ascent in popularity. The recipe became a bit of a status symbol in suburban dining, signifying that a housewife had a refrigerator and the time to prepare an 'elegant', labour-intensive dish.