Using our own blood as the main ingredient we made a joint, collaborative self-portrait in the form of black puddings. We then showed a pair of these black puddings in a glass fronted fridge alongside three large photographs, a recipe and a video documentary at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh from 26 October 2024 - 16 March 2025. The context of the National Portrait Gallery offered a very productive situation for the work to respond to and operate within as it houses a variety of painted, sculpted and photographic portraits stretching back several hundred years. Our artwork questions the traditions & history of self-portraiture in several ways; in its materiality (blood), its form (black pudding) and its creative genesis (collaborative co-authorship). Questions arise around what the 'self' in such a self-portrait might be given that it is a collaborative work created by two distinct selves and involves blood from two individuals mixed together. The lowly and somewhat absurd form of the black pudding humorously questions the status typically placed on portraits and self-representations, whilst also connecting the work to our longstanding research interests in the grotesque body and commodity forms.
Two live cooking performances with an audience took place on 26th October 2024 and 13th February 2025, which was followed by an artist talk and audience Q&A. The exhibition was reviewed in the Times newspaper 20th January 2025 and we were also interviewed for the Skinny magazine, January 2025 issue. This exhibition has reached a very large & broad audience both through the gallery show itself and also through this broadsheet & popular press coverage.
This work was first shown in 'Romantic Detachment'' at PS1 MoMA Centre for Contemporary Art, New York 15th October - 9th November 2004, commissioned by Grizedale Arts and funded by the Henry Moore Foundation.