Nutritional Index
Art Gallery of South Australia
18, 19, 26 February 2022
The Impressive Vibrant Fantasy Buffet: Five Essential Rules to Achieve a Rodin Torso in Under Two Months
Art Gallery of South Australia
30 July – 30 August 2022
Nutritional Index was conceived as part of a wider exhibition program, Reaching Out, initiated in 2021 by Tutti Arts. South Australian artists Kurt Bosecke and Emmaline Zanelli were invited to respond to the permanent collection of The Art Gallery of South Australia and granted rare behind-the-scenes access to the gallery. They met and interviewed staff across all departments of the organisation, from conservators to curators to security staff. The results of the artists’ research were a suite of humourous, performative guided tours, Nutritional Index, presented as part of the 2022 Fringe Festival. The tours won the 2022 Fringe BankSA’s Best Art and Visual Design award.
[Nutritional Index] sees Kurt and I play hybrid characters – nutritionists and art historians from the Australian Bureau of Cultural Dietetics Eating For Good Health (A.B.C.D.E.F.G.H.). Throughout the tour, Kurt and I speak to several artworks on display within AGSA’s galleries, using nutrition as a lens through which to understand the works in a different light. Audience members are issued with level 3 security clearance lanyards upon arrival, and we are accompanied by 4 security staff (played by members of The Bait Fridge), and after 1 hour of moving through the galleries, we finish the tour with a Nutribullet smoothie using ingredients referencing the artworks throughout the tour.1
On the subject of his favourite works on the tour, Kurt says:
Emmaline [and I], we were talking a bit about brussel sprouts, as well, a lot… where those people usually cook it, cook it on the stovetop in the frying pan in the old days. That’s part of AGSA… [Yayoi] Kusama’s ‘The Spirits of the Pumpkins Desecended into the Heavens’, it’s beautiful, made out of kabocha… The second thing I learned was the Macdonald’s Dioarama [Jake and Dinos Chapman’s ‘Das swings unt roundabouts fur der kinder? Ja? Nein! Schweinhund! (Swings and roundabouts for the children? Yes? No! Pigface!)’]…very dominant, very dominant that funny old desparate creatures but definitely gory. Hundreds of thousands of dead bodies, lots of gore, guts everywhere…but I always still love it.2
Kurt and Emmaline were invited to publish a visual essay on Nutritional Index in Artlink’s Wirltuti / Spring 2022 issue SENSORIA: Agency & Access. Written in character, Nutritional Content of Collection (AGSA) featured working visual documents, text and new imagery by both artists, to capture the thinking behind the tours and subsequent short film in development at the time.
Following the Nutritional Index tours, Kurt and Emmaline worked with independent South Australian filmmaker, Eloise Holoubek, to create a two-channel video on the artists’ time working with the collection. The Impressive Vibrant Fantasy Buffet: Five Essential Rules to Achieve a Rodin Torso in Under Two Months was exhibited at the Art Gallery of South Australia during SALA Festival in 2022. It won the City of Adelaide Incubator Award and the UnitCare Services Digital Media Award at the 2022 SALA Awards.
Media coverage:
Yask Desai, Nutritional Index, fineprint magazine, Issue 28: Collections.
Angela Skujins, ‘An artful degustation with ‘Nutritional Index’, CityMag, 24 February 2022.
Peter Greco interviews Kurt Bosecke and Emmaline Zanelli, Vision Australia Radio, 12 Feb 2022.
Nutritional Index was supported by Tutti Arts, the Art Gallery of South Australia, The Department of Premier and Cabinet, Arts SA, and the Adelaide Fringe Festival. Many thanks to Leigh Robb, Curator of Contemporary Art, AGSA.
Reaching Out was a Tutti Arts initiative curated by Belinda Howden, Patricia Wozniak (Visual Arts Coordinator, Tutti Arts) and Ellen Schlobohm (Deputy Visual Arts Coordinator, Tutti Arts). Many thanks to Patricia and Ellen for their enduring support.
- Emmaline Zanelli, ‘Nutritional Index’, https://emmalinezanelli.com/Nutritional-Index-2021-2022 ↩︎
- Kurt Bosecke, unpublished interview with Belinda Howden, 9 February 2022. ↩︎
BELINDA HOWDEN 