Art Now: Cooking Sections: Salmon: A Red Herring

2 December 2020 – 28 February 2021
Supported by the Art Now Supporters Circle and Tate Americas Foundation
Free admission, timed tickets must be booked in advance by all visitors, including members
Open daily 10.00 – 18.00
For public information call +44 (0)20 7887 8888, visit www.tate.org.uk, follow @Tate #ArtNow #climavore

This winter, London-based Cooking Sections present their new project Salmon: A Red Herring at Tate Britain, reflecting on the impact of salmon farms on the environment. This is the latest in Tate Britain’s ongoing Art Now series of free exhibitions showcasing emerging talent and highlighting new developments in British art.

Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual & Alon Schwabe) is a duo of spatial practitioners examining the systems that organise the world through food. Using installation, performance, mapping and video, their research-based practice explores the overlapping boundaries between visual arts, architecture, ecology and geopolitics. Salmon: A Red Herring is a continuation of Cooking Sections’ long-term body of work CLIMAVORE which explores how our diet can address and respond to the climate emergency. Different from carnivore, omnivore, locavore, vegetarian or vegan diets, CLIMAVORE is not only about the origin of food, but also about the agency that food has in our response to human-induced climatic events. At the core of CLIMAVORE and Salmon: A Red Herring at Tate Britain is an aim to embrace an adaptive and responsive form of eating.

The exhibition consists of a site-responsive installation which uses sound, light and sculpture to explore the deceptive reality of salmon, both as a colour and a fish. Beyond the symbolic space of the exhibition galleries, the project has also prompted a direct action: the long-term removal of farmed salmon from food outlets at all four Tate sites. In close dialogue with the artists, chefs have been inspired to create alternative dishes using ingredients that promote regenerative aquaculture. You can find these new menu items at the Djanogly Café and the Members’ Room at Tate Britain.

Cooking Sections commented: “Salmon: A Red Herring is the culmination of a multi-year research process into the detrimental effects of intensive salmon farming on the UK's environment. We are grateful that Tate has become part of the CLIMAVORE network by permanently removing farmed salmon from their menus, becoming a cultural space not only to reflect upon urgent ecological questions, but also to start taking concrete action to address the climate emergency."

Alex Farquharson, Director of Tate Britain added: “We are delighted to welcome visitors back to the first new Art Now display at Tate Britain opening this year. Art Now offers us an exciting opportunity to work with contemporary artists at a time at which their practice feels particularly relevant. Cooking Sections’ work is fascinating and inspirational and I hope it sparks many important conversations.”

Art Now is a series of free exhibitions at Tate Britain focusing on new and recent work by emerging artists. Since the 1990s, Art Now has recognised talent at its outset and provided a launching platform for artists who have gone on to become established figures on the international art scene. The series has recently included Sophia Al-Maria, France-Lise McGurn, Joanna Piotrowska, Jesse Darling, Lisa Brice, Marguerite Humeau and Simeon Barclay. Art Now: Cooking Sections: Salmon: A Red Herring is curated by Nathan Ladd, Assistant Curator, Contemporary British Art, Tate. The exhibition is accompanied by a new book, Salmon: A Red Herring, published by Isolarii. Art Now: Cooking Sections: Salmon: A Red Herring was conceived before Covid-19.