National Gallery of Victoria
June 2018
June 7–October 7, 2018
Rirkrit Tiravanija's Untitled (lunch box) is a conceptual work that involves inviting randomly selected visitors to share a Thai takeaway meal in the gallery space. The meal consists of pork satay, green papaya salad, chicken yellow curry, and rice, as specified by the artist.
Tiravanija is widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of his generation. Since the 1990s, he has based much of his art around the idea of creating social spaces and platforms for instruction and discussion. His works have taken various forms, including performances, teaching, readings, broadcasting music, cooking, and sharing meals. They are associated with the concept of "relational aesthetics," a term coined in the 1990s by French curator and art critic Nicolas Bourriaud, who defines it as "a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space." To put it simply, as Tiravanija has stated, "it is not what you see that is important but what takes place between people."