Extended Shelf Life (1995)

Lubna Chowdhary's ceramic work has been heavily influenced by her experience and observations of food preparation. Most Indian food is labour intensive in its making and until very recently there have been few ready made Indian food products. To prepare a meal one had always to work from raw materials. Chowdhary enjoys working with clay, and is interested in the recyclable nature of this organic material. In India people travelling by train often drink from low fired clay cups, as they are finished with they are thrown from the trains where the clay debris returns to the earth. In stark contrast urban societies often bottle water in plastic, a material that only very slowly decomposes.

With Extended Shelf Life (1995), Added Vitamins (1995) and Grown for Flavour (1995), Chowdhary examines and plays with commonly used marketing terms currently used to sell food produce in supermarkets. The shapes of the ceramics suggest familiar and exotic fruit and vegetables, but the growth like legs sprouting from one, and the jewel like patterns on the surface of all, allude to a slightly sinister synthetic decay.

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