Tender Touches New Art Cafe in Peckham

Open Space launches Tender Touches, a new artist-designed experiential art café where you can eat, touch and feel the artwork.

Open Space has launched a temporary artist-designed cafe at AMP Gallery in Peckham, South London open to the public until 30 June. The cafe, which is a participatory exhibition entitled Tender Touches, takes the form of an ‘art cafe’ where everything – from the food to the furniture and tableware – is both a functional object and an artwork. Visitors to the cafe will be able to sample a regularly changing seasonal menu created by artist and co-curator Inês Neto dos Santos. The exhibition and cafe will be open Wednesdays – Sundays, 10am-6pm.

Tender Touches will also host a series of artist-led workshops and supper clubs, taking place among the new commissions by a group of 12 international emerging artists. The exhibition is co-curated by Huma Kabakci, Founding Director of Open Space, and Portuguese artist Inês Neto dos Santos.

The food menu priced from £2.50 – £12.00 features both sweet and savoury dishes with a focus on seasonality and local produce and is inspired by Neto dos Santos’ interest in sustainable food practices such as preservation and fermentation. Each dish has been inspired by encounters and conversations between the artists in the show.

Tender Touches: Curators’ Tour (FREE)

Saturday 22nd June, 14:00 – 15:00

An intimate tour of the exhibition, providing insight into the curatorial and conceptual process behind Tender Touches, the influences and theoretical references behind the food elements in the project, and the creative process behind commissioning the artworks on display.

Tender Touches: Kombucha workshop with Inês Neto dos Santos (from £16.58)

Saturday 23rd June, 14:00 – 16:00

Learning about kombucha, while exploring the connections between food, memory and story-telling!

This session follows on as a natural accompaniment to the Fermentation workshop. Seeking to explore the connections between food, memory and story-telling, participants will be encouraged to experiment, combining various ingredients such as fresh herbs, spices, fruits and teas to create health-giving kombucha. Led by Inês Neto dos Santos, they will leave with a basic understanding of the fermentation process, as well as special recipes and drinks of their own to take away and enjoy at home.

Natural fermentation has been adopted for millennia as a means to retain the flavour and shelf life of common ingredients, whilst promoting the growth and life cycle of good bacteria. Through her own fermentation practice, Neto dos Santos will discuss how we can understand ferments as relevant metaphors for everyday life: archives of edible stories and history, hints into how we live today and how our lives might look in the future.