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Graham Ramsey, Beer +
Cheeseburger + Icecream /
Spagetti x
Chips = Graham Ramsey,
dim var. 1999.
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Its been some time now
since the West has conferred cultural value on being
portly. Most often it signifies greed, at least moral
inferiority. The overweight male remains all but
invisible in the media except as a health risk. Recent
medical findings have only accelerated a trend towards
downsizing. Nevertheless, the spectacular logic of
entertainment in millennial capitalism dictates that
anything goes. Thus, "gut barging" is a growing
media sport in pub-crazed Britain, and, in late 1998,
fatness and the male body formed the subject of a
Melbourne art experiment by a visiting YBA, in residence
at 200 Gertrude Street as part of the Melbourne Scotland
Cultural Exchange. Graham Ramsays
conceptual aim in Beer + Cheeseburger was to
increase his body weight as much as possible within a two
month period of forced high calorie consumption, combined
with "a programme of zero physical exercise."
This performance was meticulously documented, and the
results neatly summarised in a side-on before-and-after
shot, showing two pale hairy bellies; the one on the
right is ten kilos heavier, bulging over the belt buckle.
A wall plastered
with diet sheets detailed, day by day, the entirety of
his consumption over the period, as well as any
incidental notes (the Melbourne gas crisis in October
made things awkward, as did tooth pains following too
much sweet food). On another wall was the obligatory
graph. To implicate the audience, a bowl refilled with
hot chips at regular intervals on opening night was left
on a podium.
There was also a
short video of the guts growth made with fellow
Scot, Clara Ursitti. In this up-beat documentary, Ramsay
scoffs junk food, orders hot chips, and watches The
Simpsons. The De Niro technique is held up as an
inspiration, and Marlon Brando's dinner is perfectly
reproduced. Both exemplars remind us that this is a
specifically male inter-text.
The accompanying
catalogue, in the form of an interview with the artist,
parodies the language of popular diet programmesof
"strict regimes" and the likewhile also
recognising the contradictions of diet and consumer
culture, reconciled only in advertising dollars. But this
knowingness is undercut by Ramsays own acknowledged
decadence as an artist, and his stated, yet impossible,
desire "to attain the higher state of untroubled
consumer."
Different audiences
would certainly have had different reactions to this
spectacle of the male body. As a comment on our excessive
consumption, hedonism, and the rules that guide it, the
show was neither didactic nor merely ironic. Its appeal
was both voyeuristic and vicarious, circus-like and
mundane - like the opening night screening of Ramsay's
collaborative video work with John Beagles Video Hits
and Misses, which can be read as a comic melange of
white British masculinity in crisis. As much as Ramsay's
work could be discussed philosophically in terms of
unproductive expenditure, the key to such vernacular
expression lies more in its proudly inane humour. As for
too much fat, well, it's still bad for you.
Daniel
Palmer
1999
© The artist and
Courtesy of the artist.
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