Rita McKeough: The Lion’s Share

Rita McKeough, Josephine Mills, Elizabeth Diggon

Rita McKeough: The Lion's Share 

Lethbridge, Canada: University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, 2012

64 pp., 24 x 17  x 1 cm., hardcover

Edition size unknown

The Lion’s Share was an exhibition curated by Josephine Mills for the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, in 2011. It then traveled to the Doris McCarthy Art Gallery, Dalhousie Art Gallery, Kenderdine Gallery, and the Illingworth Kerr Gallery. 

The immersive installation included audio, electronics, and an opening night performance. The gallery was transformed into a faux-restaurant, which featured a kitchen floor covered in egg shells, table-settings with motorized spears stabbing at hotdogs and carrots, and glasses of milk which have formed their own tongues. Speakers played the sound of a lion eating. 

The artist described the scene as like “a 3D-version of a Looney Tunes restaurant in which things have gone terribly awry,” 

“I set out to find a dozen wild hotdogs in the coulees behind The Lions Share diner. I needed to get some fresh stock for the feedlot buffet before the dinner rush. I know there were probably hundreds maybe even thousands of them roaming through the coulees but I was in a rush and I didn’t have time to go very far. It is always hard to find them up near the buildings but I got lucky and found a dozen after about twenty minutes. They don’t move very fast so once I found them it was simply a matter of using my spear to poke them along.

It was hard to get them all going in one direction –a bit like herding cats, I imagine. . As soon as we got close to the building they all seemed to panic and they tried to turn back towards the grassland. It took me quite a while to gather them up again. I was starting to get a little frustrated. The hardest part was getting them through the door to the diner. They got more and more agitated and I had to be careful not to poke them too hard and leave marks on them. Our customers never liked to see marks on the bodies of the hotdogs. Once I got them into the diner, it was tricky moving them in between the tables and chairs, especially with people already filling the restaurant. Finally, I got them to the buffet table and I gently lifted each one with tongs and placed it into the buffet holding pen. It seemed stressful, overcrowded, and still full of hotdog droppings from the day before. I really needed to clean it out more often. To be honest, I felt really uneasy about putting them in but they were on the menu so what could I do?”

 - Rita McKeough