The Dirty Dozen: exploring Melbourne’s street food history through art

From March 13 to August 29, artist Kenny Pittock and curator Richard Cornish present The Dirty Dozen: Stories Behind the Food That Made Melbourne at Melbourne Town Hall’s City Gallery.

This exhibition delves into the cultural significance of Melbourne’s street food, tracing its rich history through art.

Featuring 12 hyper-realistic ceramic sculptures, Mr Pittock and Mr Cornisht explore Australia’s food history, from the native Angasi oysters that sustained Indigenous communities for tens of thousands of years to the modern-day coffee cup.

Part of the 2025 Melbourne Food and Wine Festival program, the exhibition moves beyond food as mere sustenance, instead examining the cultural narratives woven into street meals.

Artist Mr Pittock hopes visitors leave with a “deeper appreciation of where some of our food comes from and thinking about some of their own food-related memories as well”.

Reflecting on his artistic process, Mr Pittock noted that sculpting these detailed pieces made him reconsider Melbourne’s street food as more than just a convenience – it serves as a marker of cultural evolution.

“Street food is often made and consumed very quickly, and so recreating these items out of clay, which is an extremely slow medium, gave me time to reflect on each item of food in a different way,” he said.

The exhibition also includes historical menus, imagery, and objects from the City of Melbourne’s Art and Heritage Collection, providing context for the sculptures.

Curator Mr Cornish, a respected food journalist and author, brings his expertise in culinary heritage to the project. His goal is to bridge past and present through food as a shared experience.

“I want people to come and see the foods that they’re familiar with and realise that people have been eating food on the street since we arrived in Melbourne and it’s such an important part of our culture,” Mr Cornish said.

“The audience can see that people from the past are just like us; they eat, they have needs, they drink, they have fun and that the streets of Melbourne have long been a place for that.”

Mr Pittock, a Melbourne/Naarm-based artist, focuses on sculptures and paintings that highlight the significance of everyday objects - including food – to “playfully reveal the hidden meanings and significance that they hold in our lives”.

For Mr Pittock, collaborating with Mr Cornish felt like a “natural fit”. Their combined expertise resulted in a richly detailed narrative charting the evolution of Melbourne’s street food.

City of Melbourne Lord Mayor Nick Reece, who opened the exhibition, emphasised that food has played a key role in the city’s multicultural history.

“From the Wurundjeri people, who hunted our land more than 60,000 years ago, to the tastes of the Mediterranean to our iconic Asian-fusion influence – Melbourne is a cultural melting pot,” he said.

Mr Pittock echoed this sentiment, noting that Melbourne’s multicultural history brings “a myriad of rich and diverse food stories”. However, he acknowledged that no single exhibition can fully capture the city’s food narrative.

“[Mr] Cornish has explored just twelve of these stories for this exhibition, which is just a drop in the ocean of our broader and ever evolving food story.”

The Dirty Dozen celebrates the enduring power of food to bring people together and shape Melbourne’s world-renowned culinary scene.

As the Lord Mayor put it, “Melbourne is the food and wine capital of Australia for a reason, and this exhibition, in part, goes a long way to explain our culinary history”.

Entry is free, with the exhibition is open Monday to Friday, 8.30am to 5pm, and Saturday and Sunday, 11am to 4pm. •