TAKEAWAY: TALES FROM THE FLAVOUR SUPERHIGHWAY
Marley Dawson, Keg de Souza, Gianna Christella Hayes, Gillian Kayrooz, Zora Pang, Janhavi Salvi, James Tylor
Curated by Mariam Ella Arcilla and Denise Thwaites
Presented as part of Canberra Art Biennial.
12 September - 24 October 2026
Exhibition Opening: Friday 11 September 2026, 6pm
TAKEAWAY: Tales from the Flavour Superhighway is an artistic project that explores ecological networks, food sovereignty, and decolonial cultural practices.
Curated by Denise Thwaites and Mariam Ella Arcilla, TAKEAWAY comprises an exhibition, knowledge-trading sessions, talks, food demos, and tours across Ngunnawal and Ngambri/Canberra and Gadigal/Sydney. The project invites audiences to engage with the complex and regenerative stories that underpin eating and cultivating food by asking them to reimagine social, historical, and cultural systems for community nourishment, while reclaiming food and waste economies.
The TAKEAWAY exhibition takes place at Canberra Contemporary from 12 September-24 October 2026 and features works by ACT and NSW artists Marley Dawson, Keg de Souza, Gianna Christella Hayes, Gillian Kayrooz, Zora Pang, Janhavi Salvi, and James Tylor. Presented as part of Canberra Art Biennial 2026, the show is accompanied by a public program held at multiple venues across Canberra–themed around gastropoetics, food security, and diaspora eating imaginaries. Included in the show is a pop-up library curated by Magenta House featuring publications and ephemera that serve as ‘side dishes’ to the concepts and themes explored by the artists, curators, and thinkers in this project.
The project kicked off with TAKEAWAY Art Kitchen: a creative development program for emerging artists produced in collaboration with Magenta House and Tributary Projects. Food producers, writers, artists, and farmers were invited to stage hands-on sessions exploring takeaway eating methods, regenerative farming, ancestral recipes, and food marketing. Facilitators include Xinyi Lim, Lauren Carroll Harris & Sam Vincent (Gollion Farm), Soph Mico (Tenderground), Gianna Christella Hayes, and Mariam Ella Arcilla with contributions from Bethaney Turner and Ro McFarlane (University of Canberra).
Ultimately, TAKEAWAY takes a regenerative approach into why and how we eat, while digesting fraught histories and ecologies of land, water and labour.
Image: Gillian Kayrooz, From The Palm Of, 2024, Two-Channel video, 1080p, 1 hour 27 minutes, still. Image courtesy the artist.
This project has received funding support from Creative Australia and the University of Canberra and is presented in partnership with Canberra Art Biennial and Magenta House.
