The Bows has noticed a desire for events within the city that support and foster connections beyond looking at art within a gallery space. The Bows, historically a static place to view art, is temporarily transforming our gallery into a space for socializing and bonding over food. This project takes inspiration from artist Rirkrit Tiravanija’s performance 'untitled 1990 (pad thai)' and desires to engage with the community, in exciting, creative and unexpected ways. The recurring social club welcomes local chefs and creatives who are invested in using their practices as a catalyst for strengthening and connecting communities, as well as exposing people to cultural and culinary experiences they have not had before.

For the first iteration of Snack and Share Social Club, The Bows welcomed Leslie Bull of Kokom’s Bannock Kitchen. Leslie served Bannock, Bison Meatballs and an accompanying sauce made of Wild Berries.

The second presentation of Snack and Share Social Club featured Ty! Ty, who cooks with an open mind in Moh’kins’tsis, served German potato dumplings with green olive, chili pepper, radish, dill, and LOVE.


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Artist and writer Marsel Reddick was invited to create a publication in response to The Bows Snack and Share Social Club. The publication was created with the intention of mapping a constellation of food art within which Snack and Share Social Club may locate itself. The Snack and Share Social Club is a series of pop-up artist restaurants where local creatives are invited to transform the gallery into a space for eating and socializing. The catalogue illustrates ways artists have interacted with food for the past century, honing in on contemporary artist restaurants occurring in Calgary, Alberta. Artworks selected were based on their relevance to The Bows’ Snack and Share Social Club, and in cases where an artist has produced several food related works, their earliest or most relevant work(s) have been chosen. Blank pages are included in the back of the publication so that its reader/ user can add items that may have been missed or were not yet created. Those who hold this publication are invited to tape in more paper as needed and to share this information freely. The publication identifies itself as a punk-zine, modestly resisting notions of authorship, copyright, profit, and possession. All information reproduced in this text has come from the internet, where it already exists in the public sphere, and is relocated here for the sake of bringing together works which are hungry for community.

Marsel Reddick is an artist and writer based in Moh’kins’tsis whose research explores identity, divination, materiality, trans history, magic, intuition, and affect. In their practice, they consider the ongoing entanglements of self and otherness through a variety of media such as claymation, sound, zines, performance, and installation. To demonstrate the tenuousness of selfhood, they attempt to facilitate experiences that challenge automatic distinctions between self and other, offering alternate modes of moving through the world.