La Ligue Gourmande
February 12, 2021
Description
The Fort Gallery is pleased to present La Ligue Gourmande, an exhibition by Vancouver Island-based artist Todd Gronsdahl. This exhibition is part of the gallery’s four-part series, Making Home, which invites reflection on our changing relationship to the domestic sphere.
Of all the cultural casualties of the COVID-19 pandemic, the dinner party is certainly foremost among them. Gronsdahl’s work turns an ethnographic eye on the conventions of social dining, particularly referencing French gastronomical supper clubs through interactive food performances. Inspired by decades of cooking and running restaurants, Gronsdahl’s work takes up conventions of the dinner party as a way to explore social conventions and the experience of direct exchange involved in making, serving and sharing a meal.
Gronsdahl situates his food performances in the context of the fictional “Saskatchewan Maritime Museum,” a project he has been developing and exhibiting since 2017. The absurd conceit of a maritime museum in landlocked Saskatchewan pokes fun at and deconstructs official histories of Canadian nation-building, and in Gronsdahl’s words, seeks to “right the official record through a bit of mischief and humour.” Gronsdahl’s exhibition displays a collection of fictional, prop-like, artifacts which together construct absurd narratives. By adopting conventions of museum display, Gronsdahl questions the structures that convey official histories.
In La Ligue Gourmande, Gronsdahl’s fictional museum and absurdist supper club collide temporarily in the Fort Gallery’s intimate heritage space. In the context of historic Fort Langley, this exhibition invites reflection on the construction and glorification of Fort Langley’s official narratives and the mechanisms that inscribe them.
La Ligue Gourmande runs February 11-March 28 at the Fort Gallery. The exhibition will open with a virtual Philosopher’s Cafe featuring the artist on Thursday, February 11, 7:30-8:45pm. Gronsdahl will host a virtual cocktail hour and food performance on Thursday, March 18 at 7:30pm where he will teach participants to make his signature Fort Langely-themed cocktail. See fortgallery.ca for further information and registration. All are welcome to attend these events.