Diego Bonetto & collaborators: Wildfood.store
Artist Diego Bonetto will work with farmers and Kandos locals to create a commercially viable forager’s network, called Wildfoods.store. Through his involvement with Futurelands2, where Bonetto collaborated with chef team Alfie’s Kitchen to provide a forager’s feast to 130 guests, Bonetto has established relationships with several land owners who are curious about the economic potential of the plants which grow abundantly on their properties. Building on his extensive knowledge of wild foods that grow throughout the region, Bonetto will explore the possibilities of fostering a grassroots cooperative strategy in collaboration with a small network of landowners.
The project will be underpinned by community-engaged workshops in collaboration with chefs and distributors, in order to define key staple produce that can form the basis for an ongoing relationship between rural and city food economies. An integral part of the project is Bonetto’s storytelling about people living on the land, exploring changing relationship with the environment, and indigenous and exotic traditional relationships to plant species.
Artist’s Blog
Wildfood Store was just a newborn at the start of the AFS project. Here’s the story of this bold, beautiful (and entrepreneurial!) project.