Project: Illustration for cookbook recipe card and poster
Client: Love is my Velocity
Recipe card illustration and poster for record label Love is my Velocity's cookbook with collaborations between local musicians and artists in 2009.
The recipe for deep fried wanton cheese was provided by sound artist and composer Cat Hope's experimental noise band Abe Sada.
In Cat Hope's words, Abe Sada "is a bass orchestra project whose main aim is to manipulate the lower end of the sound spectrum through live shows that combine installation with performance".
I wanted to represent the heavy atmosphere of the band's work in the illustration to accompany their recipe. Where something innocent, as slicing up some freshly deep fried wontons, could become sinister and foreboding like a showdown between three starving participants eager to hurt, kill or eat one another. Is the knife-wielder focusing on the wontons or the rat or cat? Is the cat (Hope-fully) watching on the peripheral of the scene, awaiting the rat's death?
Mimicking old black and white horror and suspense movies, the low angle perspective portrays the knife-wielder as a threat, the exaggerated shadow, encroaching darkness and dilapidated surrounds add to this perception. The contrasted steaming wontons are the prize, reflected in the eyes of the participants.
