Dinner with Trimalchio
Dinner with Trimalchio
1994
Bronze, polychrome patina
Edition of 6
67 × 81 × 86 cm
Cast by Ken Cook
Dinner with Trimalchio takes its title from Petronius’s Satyricon, in which the enormously wealthy Trimalchio stages extravagant feasts where appearances are deliberately deceptive: what the guests see is not necessarily what they are about to eat.
The sculpture brings this idea of excess and illusion together with the tradition of seventeenth century Dutch still life. A lobster, oysters, a lemon with its long curling peel, a plate of olives and an artichoke are arranged among elaborate vessels: a giant cup, a slender wine flute and a goblet surmounted by a bird, recalling the ornate drinking vessels found in Dutch still life painting. The abundance is seductive, but it also belongs to the tradition of vanitas, in which luxury and plenty coexist with mortality and decay.
The great circular dish supporting the composition was inspired by a passage in Homer’s Iliad. During the funeral games held in honour of Patroclus, Achilles offers as a prize a magnificent silver mixing bowl, carried across the sea by Phoenician traders and described as a masterpiece of Sidonian craftsmanship. This imagined ancient object became the foundation on which the feast is assembled.
Writing about the sculpture, David Matthews described Dinner with Trimalchio as Fuller’s “most ambitious composition so far”, bringing together abundance with death and decay. Its many elements were modelled separately before being brought together as an unusually complex polychrome bronze. The work was cast by Ken Cook, with whom Fuller developed a close collaboration in which colour became integral to the sculpture. Fuller painted the plaster casts to indicate the individual patinas she wanted, and some of these elaborate still lifes required more than twenty moulds.
After being exhibited at Coventry Gallery, Dinner with Trimalchio was later installed within a pond environment at Orion Sculpture Park in Yass, New South Wales. Set on rocks above the water and surrounded by planting, the circular table became part of the landscape, its objects reflected in the pond. Not every component proved hardy enough to remain permanently outdoors, however. Delicate elements, including the lemon and its curling peel, eventually had to be removed.
The work has therefore had two quite different lives: first as an extravagant feast encountered within a gallery, and later as an improbable table set within a garden. In both settings, abundance carries its own contradiction. The objects celebrate sensual pleasure, craftsmanship and display, while the traditions from which they emerge remind us that such pleasures are temporary.
References
David Matthews, catalogue essay, Stephanie McDonald: Sculpture,
Coventry Gallery exhibition catalogue, 1994.
Ken Cook and Stephanie Fuller, Ken Cook: Out of the Workshop, Pangolin London, 2022.
Petronius, Satyricon, “The Dinner of Trimalchio.”
Homer, The Iliad, Book 23, Funeral Games for Patroclus.
Coventry Gallery, Sydney, exhibition documentation, 1994.
Orion Sculpture Park & Gardens, Yass, New South Wales, installation documentation.