My research is related to memory, and I collected many memories and images from my childhood and recollections. My collection reveals around ‘dreamcore’ and desserts from my childhood, the millennial generation, there were very many drink and dessert shops, and the Asian millennial style is one of highly saturated colours, bold colour schemes and complex structures, these characteristics are also used in many food shops. The term ‘dreamcore’, which has been thrown around a lot lately, also relates to the millennial style, which refers to a familiar but unfamiliar feeling of slightly faded colours, blurred picture quality and slightly eerie empty scenes. Although ‘dreamcore’ usually reminds the viewer of their own childhood and resonates with the viewer, it also gives a very mysterious feeling through the eerie colours.
My intention was to combine ‘dreamcore’ and food in this series to form ‘foodcore’, which refers to desserts in highly saturated colours that feel familiar and mysterious but are not very appetising because the colours are too vibrant. I’ve taken a lot of photos of dessert shops that sell desserts in the style of ‘foodcore’ whilst travelling overseas and around Australia. I am interested in the highly saturated drinks topped with rich creams, fruits, and coloured candies in crystal clear glasses that these millennial desserts have in common. These photographs are used as source material for my paintings.
In this series, I have left one of the cups or desserts in the picture white. I want to make the picture more narrative and give the viewer more space for reverie. At the same time, I aim to express the absence of memories -memory loss, through the picture being blurred or missing parts. I aim to indicate the distance between my childhood memories and my current life. The form and material I explored is oil paint, the slow drying nature of oil paint and the variety of colours help me to achieve a realistic but vibrant effect. My process begun by collecting photographs of dessert shops from the millennial generation, colour mixing them, incorporating them into my childhood memories and finally presenting them as oil paintings on canvas.
This project is inspired by Wayne Thiebaud’s work as well as my childhood memories and love of desserts. I was inspired by the highly saturated desserts and heavy creams in Thiebaud’s paintings, his use of vibrant colours and his presentation of desserts in textured and vibrant colours is very close to my ideas and concepts. Andriotis M.E (2023) notes that Thiebaud ‘uses no black, and no white in his shadows’, which is the key texts that inform my project. The highly saturated colours could take the artist and the viewer back to the dreamy and happy scenes of childhood.
