Obesity

‘I Can Not Help the Way I Feel’ by John Isaacs, 2003
Wax, polystyrene, steel, expanding foam and oil paint

In this work lies an interest in a representational possibility of the emotional landscape of the body becoming manifest in its surface. Visually, the way in which the flesh grows, erupts and engulfs the body can be seen as a metaphor of the way in which we become incapacitated by the emotional landscape in which we live and over which we have little control. Of course, the body also appears to be suffering from some kind of malignancy, as in cancer, but, for me, the image of the figure, coupled with the title, leads one into an open contemplation of the plight of the individual."
John Isaacs

Galleries index

Obesity

‘Eat 22’, 11 March 2001-11 March 2002 by Ellie Harrison
Digital animation comprising 1640 still images, 15 shown here

For one year and one day, commencing on her 22nd birthday and ending on her 23rd, Ellie Harrison photographed everything that she ate. She took her digital camera everywhere with her and could not eat a morsel unless she was first photographed with it. She undertook ‘Eat 22’ not only as a test of her own endurance - a way of finding out what she consumed over the course of a year - but also as a way of determining whether such a demanding task would be possible.

Visit the Eat 22 website for more.

Galleries index