Soda Jerks

PS² is delighted to present Soda Jerks, a collaborative exhibition by E Boyfield, Phillip McCrilly, and Natalia Ruhe—opening Thursday 7 August as part of Late Night Art and running until 30 August.

Emerging from the artists' shared research during the Gramounce’s inaugural alternative MA in Food & Art Studies, Soda Jerks reimagines the mid-century soda jerk—a mid-century service worker known for flair and repetition—as a framework for thinking about food, labour, and the performance of tradition.

Water—its movement, mythology, and cultural significance—serves as the connective tissue between the artists’ diverse practices. From sacred wells and soda fountains to beer-stained pub carpets and illicit alcohol routes, liquid flows through the exhibition as both subject and metaphor, tracing pathways of desire, displacement, and cultural exchange. Alongside its symbolic charge, water appears as remedy—mineral-rich, medicinal, and often miraculous—anchored in centuries-old beliefs around healing springs and the laying on of hands.

The exhibition unfolds across multiple sites and formats: textile-based installations, a billboard commission at PeasPark, and a one-night-only tasting event. Together, these elements consider hospitality and service not simply as acts of provision, but as charged rituals of cultural transmission—simultaneously generous and guarded, intimate and institutional.

Soda Jerks navigates a fluid constellation of references: the folkloric garden of Emyr Estyn Evans; saintly pilgrimages that follow springs and wells; the quiet revival of Irish farmhouse cheesemaking around a kitchen table in West Cork. These are not fixed or nostalgic settings, but active, contested terrains where ideas of nationhood, shame, faith, and memory ripple and collide.

Rather than treating folklore as a stable inheritance, Soda Jerks frames it as a volatile archive—shaped as much by exclusion and distortion as by continuity or celebration. Boglins, gargoyles, and holy wells appear here not as curiosities, but as uneasy emblems of repetition and rupture—where vernacular belief meets political reality. Rather than treating folklore as a stable inheritance, Soda Jerks frames it as a volatile archive—shaped as much by exclusion and distortion as by continuity or celebration. Boglins, gargoyles, and holy wells appear here not as curiosities, but as uneasy emblems of repetition and rupture—where vernacular belief meets political reality. The myths that once promised healing often conceal harder truths: about who is excluded from care, whose pain is believed, and how ritual remedies are commodified or lost.

Through gestures that oscillate between humour, refusal, and uneasy generosity, Soda Jerks asks how tradition is served, who consumes it, and what kinds of bodies are made visible—or disappear—through its performance.

About the artists

E Boyfield

They/them

(UK)

is a British artist and food writer, with a background in social Anthropology and material culture. Their practice focuses on food, fermentation and textile art. The artist uses these mediums to investigate labour and political power, gender and memory. Their work has been described as irreverent, playful and folkloric. The artist enjoys collaborative working, using food as a vehicle for cultural exchange.

Phillip McCrilly

He/him

(IRL)

Phillip McCrilly is a Belfast-based artist and chef. Interested in the transgressive and interdisciplinary possibilities of food, hospitality and education, he was a participant within the Gramouce’s first alternative MA in Food & Art Studies, as well as a former co-director of artist-run spaces, FRUIT SHOP and Catalyst Arts. Considering cruising and foraging as likeminded deviant practices, his research centres around queer collective acts of land and property reclamation. Recent projects include wet HEAT sweats without scent, a Platform Commission for 40th edition of EVA International, and Meals and Sandwiches, a series of kitchen-based residencies at The American Bar, and Bakari Bakery, Belfast. 

Natalia Ruhe

She/her

(US/UK)

Natalia Ruhe is a London based designer as well as a researcher, host, listener, and cook. Her work manifests as publications, photography, workshops and sound, with an emphasis on collaboration. She is interested in the interaction between people and objects, and what this reveals about capitalist society. Through this lens, she explores the histories of food and its connections to reproductive labour, anthropology, capitalism, and work.

PS² is supported by The National Lottery through Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Belfast City Council's Artists' Studio and Makerspace Organisational Grant, and Arts & Business NI's Blueprint Investment Grant.