The Gathering Table
Kawther Luay is a chef and budding forager. Her work showcases cross-disciplinary practices that touch on migration and belonging by merging local produce and wild food with non-native culinary traditions. Kawther began working with Deveron Projects in 2019, initially setting up and developing the Neep & Okra project. She rejoined in Summer 2021 for a pilot chef residency, Square Meal. Kawther was in residence for twelve months as part of the Culture Collective programme.
Through the simple act of foraging, The Gathering Table considered the wild produce and natural materials available in and around Huntly, slowly drawing together hand-gathered and hand-made produce: co-creating meals, tinctures, textiles and objects that embody forward-thinking ancestral and indigenous wisdom. In parallel, the project also allowed Kawther and Deveron Projects to think critically about how hospitality sits within an artistic programme, exploring the role of guest and host when working internationally and in a socially engaged way. By reflecting on the interconnected value of meals, Kawther took into account the whole spectrum of relations within the social context of eating together; moving away from the independent expression of the private artist, towards creative spaces that are produced through collective experience. The project culminated in a series of three meals in three different locations - The Gathering Table in Three Acts.
In producing food, alongside the objects we use to gather around, cook and consume it, The Gathering Table worked alongside foragers and craftspeople to share practical knowledge that has the capacity to soothe the ill effects of high speed mass production and large scale industry, and revive a deeply satisfying connection with our local landscape and the act of making. Through walks, workshops and community meals, Kawther explored how lending ones time and attention to gathering and making facilitates a language of care that connects the past with our experience of the present, and looks to still possible futures.
The Gathering Table also re-launched the previously known Barter Shop in Square Deal: an ongoing experiment in an alternative food economy that looks beyond the monetary value of things, feeding into a wider vision for Square Deal as a place for community-building and active citizenship. You can find the Barter Shop outside Square Deal, 22 the Square.
About the Artists:
Kawther Luay is a chef and budding forager. Her work showcases cross-disciplinary practices that touch on migration and belonging by merging local produce and wild food with non-native culinary traditions. Kawther began working with Deveron Projects in 2019, initially setting up and developing the Neep & Okra project. She rejoined in Summer 2021 for a pilot chef residency, Square Meal. Kawther is now working as an artist in residence as part of the Culture Collective programme. Her project, The Gathering Table, explores how lending one's time and attention to gathering and making facilitates a language of care that connects the past with our experience of the present, and looks to still possible futures.
Fionn Duffy is an interdisciplinary artist from Glasgow. Reframing cultural, mineral and historic research, she traverses the distance between material origins and current systems of production and ownership. Fionn’s recent work has centred on the embodiment of historic making practices through re-creation, reconfiguring human relationships to landscape and the non-human as collaborators. She has been developing work attending to historic pottery techniques using foraged clay and milk with a focus on the pleasure and play involved in extrapolating a romanticised past in order to resist categorisation. Fionn was invited to collaborate with Kawther Luay on her project The Gathering Table (2023), which explored how gathering and making facilitates a language of care that connects the past with our experience of the present, and looks to still possible futures.