Developed during my Artist in Residence at West Dean College of Arts and Conservation, Sausage Fest began within the furniture-making department in March 2020 and continued through a return residency in 2023, alongside becoming the college’s first remote Artist in Residence during the pandemic.
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Researching the West Dean Archive, I focused on Edward James, his commissions of Surrealist interiors, and his close creative relationship with Salvador Dalí. Fragments of Monkton House and other unique architectural details revealed how James used material samples to imagine entire rooms, seducing him into commissioning dreamlike interiors filled with excess, illusion, and desire.
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James’ patronage of Dalí was rooted in intimacy, collaboration, and power. Their relationship, creative, personal, and financially dependent, became the starting point for a queer reading of patronage itself.
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Sausage Fest celebrates this tension: artistic devotion, queer desire, and the transactional nature of support. The sausage becomes both symbol and provocation, a playful, excessive form shaped by desire, appetite, and control.
Sausage Fest Swatch proposes a room lined entirely with sausages in a herringbone parquet formation: a travelling salesman’s display unit that is floor-standing, wall-hanging, and corner-hugging, designed to tempt James with the possibility of total immersion.
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An absurd proposition, perhaps, but one he may well have said yes to.