Introduction

“Travel enables us to enrich our lives with new experiences, to enjoy and to be educated, to learn respect for foreign cultures, to establish friendships…”
Jules Verne

Journey to the Centre of the Earth is a major three-part exhibition commissioned by Platform for Art at Southwark and London Underground stations. It is the result of a unique collaboration between artist Gayle Chong Kwan and people originating from all over the world who live, work and study in the London Bridge and Southwark areas. The exhibitions, Intra, Hollow Earth and Core depict fantastical worlds inspired by journeys real and imagined.

Gayle Chong Kwan led workshops and dialogues over a period of six months in restaurants, hotels, kitchens and in Borough Market. Over sixty London Underground staff, market traders, restaurant workers, and catering students worked collaboratively with the artist.

In the workshops, Chong Kwan explored culinary histories and cultures. Themes of emotional and imaginary journeys touched upon in Jules Verne’s novel, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, were also used as starting points for discussion. Participants shared their personal and sensory memories as well as their relationships with food. They experimented with blindfolded tasting activities, and cooking and food sculpting techniques.

Methods for analysing taste were used to map personal responses to particular foods. The groups explored the local area and recorded responses to the sights, smells and sounds through photography, mapping, drawing and writing.

Participants also looked at London Underground’s catering history and used this research to formulate ideas for catering and banqueting on the modern-day Tube system.

Intra, Hollow Earth and Core are epic visual representations of the accumulation and convergence of these explorative journeys.

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