Perfection Salad

Perfection Salad invites a colourful, cross-generational duo to have 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 items have been granted a reprieve from the landfill; re-arranged and re-evaluated as art, and twice-immortalised in oil paint.

As Rawyn Martin observes; “While Darragh's prolific use of plastics reflects our levels of consumption and waste, there's also something generous and subversive at work, where plastic excess creates a sense of wealth, and possibilities of re-use and redistribution resist a reductive aesthetics of scarcity.” 

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 (with a tang of citrus), received 3rd place in a Better Homes and Gardens recipe contest, thus igniting the savory Jell-O’s ascent in popularity. It became a bit of a status symbol in suburban dining, signifying that a housewife had a refrigerator and the time to prepare 'elegant', labour-intensive food. Don’t forget, you’d need an understanding of the relative density of the ingredients to ensure that everything didn’t sink to the bottom.

While Judy now tries to recirculate many materials from her studio—back to the op shop from whence they came—Emily still struggles to let go, her overflowing shipping container never far from her thoughts. Blurring the boundaries of the high and low-brow in material culture, there’s no doubt these two artists will remain timelessly fashionable, albeit an acquired taste.