2015 Summer – Artist Picnic Benches
For this years FEAST, 10 artists will customise 10 picnic tables into public artworks. The benches will add colour and creativity to some of SE5's parks, estates and public spaces. During the festival, they will be used to host public feasts and performance based work.
After the 2015 festival, tables will remain in public spaces around Camberwell for the community and visitors to use for years to come. Currently this project is a work in progress so we'll be announcing their locations towards the middle of June in time for them to be placed at the start of the Festival.
Thank you to Southwark Council, Awards for All, Hunters and Haart of Camberwell Green and Dulwich for making this project possible.
Nick Williamson
Camberwell Green
Nick inlaid the picnic table with a shallow polished metal dish. The hope is that the concave surface, with its language of a serving bowl, will be a geometric beacon from afar and a central focus for people at the table. The intervention is intentionally non didactic, with ambiguity that gives space for the community to interact with the table in interesting and unexpected ways.
Micheal Burkitt
21,188 is a portrait of everyone in Camberwell. Sit down and be counted! Using his signature visual language of yellow and black, Michael Burkitt records the local community through a tally chart, making a mark for every person recorded in the 2011 Census. Michael Burkitt’s artwork celebrates each and every person in Camberwell.
Michael Burkitt is an artist, curator and collector. Recent exhibitions include Young British Art II, curated by Ryan Gander and How Not To Sell Your Soul, No Soul For Sale at Tate Modern.
Andrew Ekins – Camberwell Green
Andrew Ekins celebrates the picnic as a way of bringing together family, friends, neighbours and communities. Reflecting the diversity and optimism of the Camberwell community, his rainbow painted picnic table links each colour with the name of a fruit or vegetable that might be eaten on a park picnic.
Andrew Ekins graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2001 with a Masters in Painting. He was recently awarded a Bright Old Thing prize from Selfridges, making the work FOOLS GOLD to fill one of their main windows on Oxford Street.
Matthew McGuinness
NEW LOCATION BEING SOUGHT
Matt continues his gourmandizing project, turning south London recipes into community murals. He says "There is an incredible gentleman named Buncle who shared a recipe with me from a time in his life when food was scarce due to War. He has lived in Camberwell for nearly 60 years.
He has seen it all, nearly, and in an interview I conducted with him, he shared with me a ton of it, as well as an incredible recipe for Suet Pudding. On my bench I will use this recipe to construct a narrative about how food had the power to bring people together."
Nkiruka – Ruskin Park
The New Yam Table - Nkiruka create an African picnic bench for Camberwell. Wrapping their table in African fabrics, they aim to transform and share these textiles whilst at the same time cherishing their craftsmanship, history and the stories, traditions and values that they represent.
Nkiruka is a creative fashion, arts, crafts and textiles design partnership based in South London. Their work specialises in the textiles, crafts and ornamental arts of the indigenous peoples and societies of Africa, Asia, South America and the Antipodes.
Laura Peroni – St. Giles Church
Mixing food and vegetable inspired graphics with geometrical patterns, Laura Pedroni creates a dense, intricate, Victorian-flavoured design for her picnic table.
Laura is a freelance designer whose work fuses the physical and digital, mixing technology and design to elicit emotion. Recent projects include Secret Cinema, FutureShorts and Wonderland as well as commercial commissions for Sony and Ray-Ban.
Kids Company – Camberwell Green
The "Kids Feast" bench has been constructed from reclaimed redwood pine and weatherproof plywood. It is coach bolted/screwed throughout and painted with weather durable paint.
The work was carried out over a period of 6 weeks by young people from Kids Company who regularly attend the furniture making workshop at Artworks Elephant, Elephant Road, Elephant and Castle. The theme exhibited on the piece highlights the valuable contribution made by Kids Company in delivering a daily feast from its centres to young people in London.
Marc Cowan – Myatt’s Fields
The Royal Picnic - Marc Cowan raises the picnic table to a whole new level. His over-sized structure enables people to eat, meet, exchange ideas and see Myatt’s Fields Park from a new perspective.
Marc is interested in exploring the boundaries between design and fine art. Previous projects include The Hive at the Southbank Centre and a series of street bollards commissioned by the Loughborough Junction Action Group.
www.marccowan.org
Jack Tatham
Jack's bench will depict the life of the powerful Puna Yam. This hefty edible tuber is grown in Nigeria, West Africa and is the staple carbohydrate for this part of the world. Nigeria is the worlds biggest producer of yams, producing 38 million tonnes in 2012! The yam is some times mixed up with sweet potato, however they are from two different plant families, the yam is part of the genus Dioscorea.The yam is often pounded to make a dish similar to mashed potato, but it can also be boiled, fried or roasted. The wide range of fruit and vegetable on offer in Camberwell reflect its diverse and magnificent residents. I want my bench to act as a homage to the yam's impressive form and its importance as a food. YAM UP THE YAM!
Sophie Herxheimer
Sophie Herxheimer’s Picnic Bench commission is a celebratory bench featuring words and motifs from local peoples' personal stories and experiences around food. These have been collected from people around the Burgess Park area, with details from the stories then being reproduced to decorate the furniture. Sophie often works on projects that involve sharing and drawing stories with members of particular groups and communities. She has collected over 1200 food stories from Londoners since 2007, when she made a hand printed tablecloth big enough to for 1020 diners to sit at, the length of Southwark Bridge, for the Thames Festival's Feast on the Bridge.
Festival Highlights
