"All You Can Eat" is an installation of over 60 works in porcelain by Monica Banks. Banks has recently been obsessed with making porcelain objects of daily use –cakes and teapots, mugs and houses – none of which are actually useable and all in a mix of scale. Some of the pieces are tiny – some oversized. And while these objects are all beautifully crafted with colorful glazes, each one contains an ominous element that undercuts the beauty. The lovely pastel cake contains safety pins in the frosting and a homey mug is spikey and harmful.
Banks then combines these everyday objects in tabletop displays with objects that are much more dangerous such as pig hands and dead birds. These weird table settings evoke the pleasure of our daily meal and at the same time, celebrate the dark undercurrent - mostly unacknowledged and unspoken– that often accompanies our everyday activities. The resulting mix is invigorating and oddly funny.
As Banks explains “ This series began with my adding self-defeating slogans (e.g., "you ruin everything," "no one cares," "why are you so...") to pretty mugs that could not successfully hold liquids. This twist on inspirational mugs and souvenirs inspired me to incorporate flower petals, tattoos, slugs, eyes, teeth, stitched flesh, and other incongruous motifs into the tableware.”
Banks has exhibited at White Box, Spring Break Art Fair, The Heckscher Museum of Art, The Carriage House at the Islip Art Museum, The Parrish Art Museum, The New Britain Museum of American Art, The Center for Architecture in New York City, and other venues. She created "Faces: Times Square,” a block-long sculpture which stood in Times Square from 1996-2009, for which she won an award from The Public Design Commission of the City of New York. Her permanent public works are located in the Bronx, Binghamton NY, and Charlotte NC. She has been exhibiting sculpture and doing site-specific installations since 1989.