FLUTTER LYON

Earlier this year, performance artist Marina Abramovic created a dessert for a restaurant on the Upper East Side called the Volcano Flambé. Diners who ordered the dessert would be presented with the flaming sweet, a lab coat, cutlery, and a set of headphones through which you can listen to Abramovic instructing you on the consumption of the dish. This week in Sydney, multi-faceted artist Flutter Lyon has been installed in the private dining room of Newtown restaurant Bloodwood, creating ink-pressed artworks that respond to her culinary surrounds. Diners and curious onlookers will be asked to write down what they see in the works, which are at once abstract and filled with forms, somewhat like Rorschach ink blot images. It seems 2011 may be the year of art in restaurants. I asked Lyon why she has chosen to work in the space. “I have always had a fascination with presenting my work outside of the traditional gallery space. I enjoy the immediacy and dialogue that can occur when work is placed into a context that the viewer is not pre-prepared to engage with ‘art’. When the viewer is relaxed and disarmed in a setting like a restaurant, they may perhaps have an more honest response to the work and I find it interesting to understand more about that.” As each work will evolve in the space itself, the results remain uncertain. Speculating, Lyon enthuses: “Imagine an image that combines the neat little fringe of my colleague sitting on a plate of polenta chips being attacked by giant knives. Who knows what will happen.”

Jun 9-30, Bloodwood, 416 King St, Newtown, 9557 7699, bloodwoodnewtown.com