Owen Griffiths is a socially engaged artist working with food systems, land use and collaborative processes. Alessandra Saviotti is a curator and art educator focusing on socially engaged art, collaborative practices, and Arte Útil (art as a tool). Together, they have created Tablecloth as Toolkit, a new artwork that gathers people around a bespoke table setting to discuss community and solidarity economies emerging in response to urgencies such as climate change, social isolation, biodiversity, capitalism, and food poverty.
Tablecloth as a toolkit - Manchester version is a generative artwork which will host a series of meals and workshops using case studies from the Arte Útil archive and local growing projects as models to inspire new ideas. The questions and provocations on the tablecloth will guide participants through various methods found in the archive. The blackboard will record intentions and ideas gathered during the meals.
This project explores ideas of food and social justice, climate, and resilience through alternative food growing and distribution systems. Tablecloth as a Toolkit will create a community research space that will evolve during the exhibition. Over the coming months, the toolkit will facilitate the connection with communities from hyper-local initiatives to local government employees, healthcare workers and growers to explore ideas of sustainable and just food systems.
As part of their research, Griffiths and Saviotti interviewed the artist Shelley Sacks about the origin of her pivotal work, Exchange Values on the Table (1996-ongoing), which addresses economy, global trade and social life. You can listen to it on dpe.tools
This project is a commission from The Whitworth as part of the exhibition Economics the Blockbuster: It's not Business as Usual (30/06/2023 - 22/10/2022)
Tablecloth as a toolkit - Manchester version is a generative artwork which will host a series of meals and workshops using case studies from the Arte Útil archive and local growing projects as models to inspire new ideas. The questions and provocations on the tablecloth will guide participants through various methods found in the archive. The blackboard will record intentions and ideas gathered during the meals.
This project explores ideas of food and social justice, climate, and resilience through alternative food growing and distribution systems. Tablecloth as a Toolkit will create a community research space that will evolve during the exhibition. Over the coming months, the toolkit will facilitate the connection with communities from hyper-local initiatives to local government employees, healthcare workers and growers to explore ideas of sustainable and just food systems.
As part of their research, Griffiths and Saviotti interviewed the artist Shelley Sacks about the origin of her pivotal work, Exchange Values on the Table (1996-ongoing), which addresses economy, global trade and social life. You can listen to it on dpe.tools
This project is a commission from The Whitworth as part of the exhibition Economics the Blockbuster: It's not Business as Usual (30/06/2023 - 22/10/2022)