Carl Warner’s Scrumptious Foodscapes

Feature by Marijhaa Andre, photographs by Lin Vitali

Carl Warner’s Scrumptious Foodscapes

Catch Carl Warner’s Chocolate Train

Enticed by the idea of seeing a chocolate train, we headed out to St Pancras International, the new home of Eurostar, to investigate the foodscapes by artist Carl Warner exhibited on the first level of the station on the 14th of October to coincide with the launch of his new book.

Whether your calling was the Eurostar or simply chocolate, you were in for a great surprise! A fabulous exhibition of more than ten scrumptious foodscapes was enough to make your belly gurgle with hunger.

Fishscape by Carl Warner - food landscape exhibited at St Pancras station, London

The art

Food is assembled on the tabletop, compositions are built in layers, and once the landscape is composed and lit it is then photographed. The compositions are built in Warner’s London studio near the Borough Market and it takes anything from a day to five days, depending on the size and complexity of the scene, to make them. Carl gave us an example of how something like the London Skyline was done in about 4 days, while Fishscape was all done in a single day.

"It had to be because of the smell and in order to keep it fit to work with the fresh fish," Carl explains, "It had to all be done in a day with six people working on it to make it happen."

The Foodscapes

Broccoli Forest by Carl Warner - food landscape exhibited at St Pancras station

When you look at Carl Warner’s still life Giuseppe Arcimboldo comes to mind. The scenes are made entirely from food. One of my favourites is the Broccoli Forest with a sugar waterfall set in a bread loaf backed by cauliflower clouds.

Sea made of pink salmon strips with a green pea pod boat, potatoes for rocks, parsley for seaweed and dill leaning in like trees was another one of my favourite pieces exhibited that day. That is possibly because orange is my favourite colour and I have smoked salmon for breakfast on a regular basis, not to mention my ongoing desire to add dill into every dish I make. The Salmon Sea truly looks delicious.

I also like the strawberry, banana, apple and garlic fruit balloons, the celery forest (- my guinea pig would have had a field day on that set!), and Garlicshire - the perfect garlic village with garlic huts set in the purple moonlight. That’s one village that will never see a vampire!

Couldn’t help but notice the Tuscan series. In Warner’s world the size of one tortellini would match the size of my D&G Keyhole Shoulder Bag, and the gigantic almonds on display in Warner’s Tuscan Market is certainly a tease for nut lovers. The Italian inspired Tuscan Landscape and Tuscan Kitchen are also very intriguing and contain nothing that shouldn’t be on my plate. The lasagne cart, fields of pasta, a pine nut wall, mozzarella clouds, trees of peppers and chillies and the Parmesan village – delish!

The one that I do recommend to check out in particular is the London Skyline with London bridge set on pineapple foundations, the London Eye capsules replaced by lip-smacking red cherries, the House of Parliament and Big Ben made of asparagus with a sour slice of lemon for the face of the clock, and St Paul’s Cathedral predominantly made of watermelon.

In sync with the chocolate week, Warner had an appetising landscape of a chocolate train accompanied by a scrumptious live model of the same chocolate train he photographed. Pay attention to the last carriage topped with white chocolate! Mmm…

Carl Warner is an outstanding artist capturing all kinds of food in a series of still lifes. With Warner’s foodscapes having started about 10 years ago, there is a decade’s worth of work to share, which he does in his latest book entitled Carl Warner’s Food Landscapes, out now.

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