We’d need to catch a lot of wild pigs for this meal. My friends would be there. I imagine us all making it together, foraging for berries, catching pigs – we’d be sweaty, scratched and dirty from running through the bushes. You must suffer for your food.
My granddad was a conceptual artist and his last project was to dig a tunnel to Africa, next to his house in the Lake District, without the authorities knowing. He hasn’t been seen since. So I’d want the meal there – to show him what’s happening above ground.
My grandma would make tea for everyone, calling out: “Wantee?” She made a lot of wonderful teapots: some are bum-shaped, because my granddad likes bums. Some are stair-shaped, because it makes it easier for the tea to cool down. Usually the tea is improved with a special ingredient.
There’d be raspberries, served on Italian and Albanian Mercedes car mirrors. Old cars – dirty, well-worn, well-travelled. Loud music playing on the stereos. Good figs, piled on the table, warm from the sun. My grandma made a table from tiles, which you can use as plates or cups or vases.
We’d have big loaves of bread, emptied out so only the crust remains, with tiny songbirds inside, singing. The loaves would be decorated with edible blue paint, so they look nice. The birds inside would fly away as we cut into it.
We’d have swum out to catch some squid in Coniston Water, coming back covered in black squid ink. We’d use the ink to draw on paper and on the floor and to write to my granddad to tell him to come back, that things are not that bad. We’d cook the squid on a big fire and serve it with lemons we’d have picked from the trees by the lake. With global warming, the Lake District has become a place for lemon trees to grow. There’d be cows, for us to drink milk from their udders.
Leeks would be growing from the car engines, which we’d harvest and grill. We might cook them on the engines. Cars are everywhere. They’ve taken over the world, killing us, but they’re also so glamorous. And they have a music system, which is important. We’ve made some songs recently about a singing car. So, we’d listen to that.
There are fish eating raspberries everywhere. So we’d drop a few raspberries in the water to catch a bunch. We’d eat the fish in a carpaccio, with chilli and herbs we’d foraged.
We’d might run around and catch a few birds too. Some of us would be wearing pineapples on our heads. People are growing them from their brains these days, so they’d be fresh. We’d just pick a few. And my grandma would have made a very nice, bum-shaped cake, all pink, with a thick soft layer of marzipan and delicious meringue and an Eton mess inside. It’d be served on one of my grandma’s trays – there were too many Kurt Schwitters paintings everywhere at one point, so she started using them as trays.
All around there’d be tapestries on the floor and all the chairs my grandma has repaired so beautifully. She made so much – it’s all there, perfect for a good gathering. Family and friends would be there – 40, 50 people. Lots of artist friends, curators, Grizedale farmers, my grandparents’ friends. My grandma would be there. She doesn’t like to come out of the living room much, but this one time we’d coax her out.
- Laure Prouvost is a French artist who won the Turner Prize in 2013. She will be taking over the Admiralty Arch as part of the ICA’s London Art Night on 2 July; ica.org.uk
.png?w=600)
