杏吧原创

An artist in residence at London鈥檚 Pied 脿 Terre restaurant, Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva uses kitchen cast-offs to create stunning sculptures

THE workspace of Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva smells like a cross between a fishmonger鈥檚 and a chemistry lab.

That鈥檚 not surprising considering the materials she uses in her artworks: discarded scallop skirts, salmon skins, quail bones and other waste she gathers up from the kitchens at Pied 脿 Terre, the well-known restaurant in London where she is artist in residence. After sloshing her way back to her studio in West Sussex with bags full of fishy refuse 鈥� drawing variously curious and horrified stares on the train 鈥� Hadzi-Vasileva experiments with different chemical treatments to turn kitchen scraps into the stuff of art.

鈥淔rom discarded scallop skirts she fashioned sculptures that resemble pearl-studded clouds鈥�

When I visited the artist in her studio, she explained how she mixes her own solutions from taxidermists鈥� staples like the tanning agent aluminium sulphate. Unwilling to share specifics, as I poked my way around her macabre workspace 鈥� with its fridges stocked with frozen lab rats and roadkill 鈥� she explained only that her process requires a lot of patience and organisation. The testing period for a single material can sometimes run for months, and each step she meticulously records in a logbook.

Every time she uses something new, monkfish rather than salmon skin for instance, she goes through a process of testing the best way to treat it. 鈥淓very material reacts differently,鈥� she says, 鈥渁nd different chemicals give different effects.鈥� She shows me a range of tiles, covered by salmon skin, pointing out that some are more bleached or warped than others.

One of the pieces for her residency is made of scallop skirts, or mantles, which secrete the mollusc鈥檚 shell. She washes, sprays and dries these tender membranes to fashion ephemeral ceiling-hung sculptures that now float above diners鈥� heads, secured by beads and fishing wire so they resemble pearl-studded clouds.

On her desk is one of several works featuring quail bones; dozens of tiny gold-plated sterna stood in neat rows, like a spooky skeletal army awaiting battle.

Yet as we chatted, I couldn鈥檛 help being distracted by one of her longest-running experiments: a chicken head suspended in a wire basket above her desk. 鈥淚 left it there to see what would happen,鈥� she informed me. Three years later, its eyes and feathers are still intact. The artist told me that other visitors have been surprised that the skull is not infested with maggots.

So what is Hadzi-Vasileva鈥檚 motivation for all this gruesome experimentation? 鈥淪ome of the stuff I work with looks like puke,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t is refuse. I鈥檓 interested in the transformation of something that is disgusting when you talk about it, but when you have finished working on it, becomes a thing of beauty.鈥�