Bone Dinner Pictures

Some Pictures from our recent collaboration with Companis, Juneau Projects and Elizabeth Short at Eastside Projects Gallery in Birmingham.

See previous 'Bone Dinner Post' for more backstory...

Images by Chris Keenan, courtesy of Eastside Projects, and Josh Pollen

 The Welcoming Commitee

Dining Room with Ribcage Audio Feed

The first canape - Rare Roasted Rack of Lamb

Mike with the second canape - Bacon, Apple Pudding and Thyme, served on a mixture of chicken thigh bones and veal shin bones.

After the bacon had been eaten, the bones were transformed into jewellery by Elizabeth Short, who had set up a drilling station on one corner of the dining table, and who created 35 unique pieces in just under three hours. The jewellery was labelled with the guests names to be taken away at the end of the night.

Elizabeth Short making Bone Jewellery

The Juneau Project, having installed wireless microphones in the kitchen and other strategic places in the dining room, twisted the recorded sounds into an epic piece of free noise which was played back into the room to accompany the sounds of flesh being eaten, Bones thrown to the floor and drunken laughter from the assembled carnivores.

Into a section of egg carton containing a thistle on one side and on the other, a hollow duck egg containing cubes of beetroot jelly and orange Jelly 'caviar' was slowly filled with a heavily-reduced Veal Consommé. The diners were instructed to drink the soup from the whole assemblage. Every single course was eaten without cutlery.

Josh plating Prawns for the 'Sucked Course', in which diners were presented with two prawns, seemingly attached to one prawn head. The prawns were poached in a bisque of their shells and legs, and the head was stuffed with a fluid gel of the Prawn brains cooked with reduced bisque.

A spinal column-shaped lickable course, consisting of a reduced, mint and thyme infused Chicken Stock. The stencils were made on a laser-cutter by Dipa Patel, with whom we have been working recently.

Josh hacking the roasted chickens in half with a meat cleaver

The table of bracelets and necklaces custom-made for the guests to take away.

All the shells, bones and carcasses were added to the growing, and by now primitively aromatic pile of bones in the centre of the room, and in turn the microphones turned the sounds into a twisted flesh- inspired soundscape.

Service over, Mike and Dipa take five.

The Menu

- Bone-Roasted Bacon with Apple Pudding and Thyme Leaves
- Roasted Rack of Lamb

- Veal Consommé with Beetroot Jelly, Orange Jelly Caviar, Tarragon Leaves
- Poached Prawns with Brain Sauce, Radishes, and Roasted Broccoli

- Chicken Stock Gel with Mint and Thyme
- Roast Chicken with Pumpkin, Leeks, Hazelnuts and Giblet Gravy

- 'Whitepot' Brioche and Veal Bone Marrow Pudding and Poached Quinces, Crème Fraiche

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We were supplied with great racks of lamb and chickens from Berkswell Traditional Meats. Searching for ingredients for our commissioned project "Repast" for Arts + Media last year, we found this family-run farm shop and butcher outside Coventry who provided us with delicious cuts of locally sourced meat. When we needed to find enough food to feed BE Theatre Festival last July Richard Tuckey from Berkswell delivered more than a hundred kilos of bits of animals, all of them wonderful.

This event was kindly supported by Eastside Projects and Fierce Festival's Arts Council funded 'Platinum' artist-practitioner development programme.