Ruby Grace Brown

Painting the Kitchen Tables is for hands moving from ladle to brush, for growling stomachs that hunger for making, for the women who create magic from four walls and a table. It is a celebration of the act of creation, the foundations of gathering, and the ability to withhold a key to laughter across the space of a kitchen.

For centuries, the spaces women take up in society have been limited and demoted, discarded and disinterested - the kitchen being the most referenced.

However, when looking upon our most visceral and beloved experiences with friends, lovers, family - they often are over a meal or a drink. The women who come in and out of kitchen doors from garden to shop to table, how they can expertly craft a wholesome spread, scarred palms outstretched and strong.

The spaces that women take up within kitchens is intrinsically and undoubtedly a space aligned with artists. It is creation, innovation, tradition, rule breaking, and above all, emotion.

This publication aims to place these women under a deserved title of “artist,” and to place the act of food creation as a valuable artform. We visit articles of women food creators and artists, whose studio often found itself within the kitchen. These articles are accompanied by poems and recipes that bring up such a familiar and loving image of the ways women take up space in the kitchen.

Holding up this publication are a series of artefacts. When attempting to communicate the tacit and intangible feelings, and experiences within kitchens and the ways in which women take up space within them, I kept returning to the table. When conjuring images of kitchens, a table sits at the centre. It is there to reach across and hold  hands, spill paint brushes over, sprinkle flour on. It is where coffee mug stains are left, first kisses are pressed against, midnight treats are stolen. The table is the life force behind this project, where all roads lead to. In Painting the Kitchen Tables however, my table is actually a tablecloth.

Accompanying this tablecloth are a series of tea towels. These tea-towels are an extension of the tablecloth, a smaller version intended to be physically used and held. In another portable extension, the recipes within the books were risograph printed onto sheets as keepsakes. Another version of this reach past the project is the poster series done again in cyanotype and screen-print. Finally, the table is set with two sets of bowls, plates, and cups hand moulded with white bisqueware.

Go on, set your table.