ABOVE: Maryam with the completed painting, and a detail. No actual paints were used - the
'ingredients' were in fact beetroot, turmeric, chili powder, spring onion, salt, tea, hot chocolate,
red cabbage, lime juice, balsamic vinegar, coal, golgav zaboon, burnt nuts, and beer!
Photo of detail by Lili Phelouzat.

BELOW: texts produced by John Gibbens on the night

"The date of the performance, July 25, 2006, was the 40th anniversary of the death of the
American poet Frank O'Hara - which is how he came to be involved. There was a
commemorative event for O'Hara organised by another team of artistic gorillas across town
in Hammersmith - and this introduced the idea of the below-the-radar cultural life of our great
capital like a network of benign bacteria in its gut, which thought was also inspired by the
fact that the artist who was painting at the Foundry that night, Maryam Hashemi, was making
all her own colours on the spot and all from foodstuffs. Her painting started out at as a swirl of
squiggles, or perhaps a squiggles of swirls, I'm not sure of the technical terms, which
introduced the idea of the maze, and of the intestinal labyrinth. Also, Israel's invasion of
Lebanon was going on and on, and Condoleezza Rice was just about getting ready to do
nothing about it, as I remember. Hence the 'brown rice die' and the 'sepretary of stake'.
The free-floating jottings that were written in the first half were interjected into the music in
the second half".