Opening Night: Friday 8 May 6–8pm

Exhibition Dates: 8 - 23 May

This body of work explores pleasure and desire through the idea of gourmandise, understood not as excess, but as a process of conscious indulgence. This is articulated through the concept of the gourmand, understood not as a glutton but as an individual who takes great pleasure in consumption.

Central to the series is an aesthetic and existential question. Is there a form of desire that seeks closeness and beauty without needing full satisfaction? Desire, in this sense, does not end. It returns, changes, and unfolds over time.

Photography is used here not only as an image, but as a reproducible object. Repetition is seen as a foundational condition of photography itself. The photographic print carries the ability to be repeated and encountered again and again. Each encounter feels familiar, yet never identical. Repetition is built into the medium itself, and this repetition echoes the way pleasure works. Like eating or desire, photography offers presence but not permanence. Each return brings both recognition and loss.

Photography suspends time while simultaneously signalling its passage. The image promises access to a subject yet withholds complete understanding. Meaning does not accumulate through reproduction. It fractures and reforms through each renewed encounter.

The series also reflects on the visual language of food photography and advertising, where images are designed to produce appetite quickly and effortlessly. In these commercial images, food is removed from labour and decay. A photograph of food in advertising promises abundance and satisfaction, encouraging immediate consumption rather than sustained looking. Rhodes borrows this language when creating the photographs in this body of work. 

Paint disrupts this smooth surface. Applied directly to the photographic print, it introduces gesture and resistance. These marks interrupt the photograph’s sense of repeatability. Unlike photographic reproduction, paint cannot be repeated in the same way. It insists on bodily presence. The image becomes slower and more difficult to simply take in.

Through this tension between photographic reproduction and painterly intervention, the works explore the boundary between consumption and intimacy. Rather than offering images to be quickly enjoyed, the series asks viewers to linger. Pleasure here is not something to be used up, but something to remain with, even as it fades.

Opening night supported by Sea Salt & Sage Catering, Young Henrys, Symphonia Wines, Heaps Normal, NON

Free entry | All welcome