All You Can Eat Virtual Tour

"All You Can Eat" is an installation of over 60 works in porcelain by Monica Banks. She has recently been obsessed with making porcelain objects of daily use – cakes, teapots, and mugs – none of them useable. 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.

Banks combines these everyday objects in tabletop displays with more menacing objects, such as pig hands and dead birds. These weird table settings evoke the pleasure of our daily meal and celebrate the dark undercurrent - mostly unacknowledged and unspoken – that often accompanies our everyday activities. The resulting mix is invigorating and oddly funny.

"This series began with my adding self-defeating slogans to pretty mugs that could not successfully hold liquids," said Banks. "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."