Artist call out for Food Fight 2013

Call out for FOOD FIGHT submissions 2013

The FESTIVE FEAST – Edition

Food Fight is a yearly collaborative exhibition and accompanying calendar produced by Sweets Workshop. Food Fight is all about food, pitting image against text, recipe against illustration, photograph against story. In the ring this year – FESTIVE FEAST!!

We’re calling for submissions from artists and writers to contribute to the exhibition and calendar. What we’re looking for are illustrations, design, photography, recipes, stories, poems and so on, that focus on the theme FESTIVE FEAST. For example, it could be about party food or a festivity!

The official exhibition opening and calendar launch will taking place on the 13th October to co-inside with the Summer Hill Neighbourhood Feast and Good Food Month. The exhibition will run from Sunday, 13th of October until Wednesday, 13th November 2013.  The calendar will be a limited edition print run and will be available while stocks last. Check out what was on offer in the previous 3 editions of Food Fight – Snack Attack, The Pack a Picnic Edition and The Sweet Tooth Edition.

If your artwork/written piece is selected it may feature in the calendar and/or the exhibition. Any written piece or artwork chosen to be included in the Food Fight calendar or exhibition will receive a free copy of the calendar. There will also be one arts prize and one writer’s prize awarded for Food Fight. The arts prize winner will receive a solo exhibition at Sweets Workshop in 2014. The winning writer will receive a Sweets Workshop gift voucher.

 Submissions close on the 25th of August 2013. Email us your entry as a low res electronic file (pdf or jpg) to info@sweetsworkshop.com. If your work is chosen, we will contact you for high res files, which we will require by the 1st September 2013. If working digitally please make sure you work to 300dpi, and if working by hand we can organise high res scans. Please feel free to forward this invitation to anyone you think might be interested in contributing. 

For those of you who don’t know about Sweets Workshop we are a retail art gallery which exhibits and stocks art, decorative objects, giftware and independent publications with a strong focus on locally handmade items. Located in Summer Hill, our aim is to offer the community something original, sweet and within reach. We have a dedicated exhibition space, which can feature one particular artist/designer, object, artistic process or theme at a time. The exhibitions change regularly to incorporate as many artists and designers as possible. For information about us please visit our website www.sweetsworkshop.com

The selection criteria for Food Fight will be at the discretion of Sweets Workshop. 

Interview with felt artist Meredith Walker-Harding

We've finally tracked down the mysterious master felt forger Meredith Walker-Harding from the underground to tell us a bit about her show 'Felt Forgeries'. 
The show is now extended until the 13th August.

Can you tell us about the concept for your show ‘Felt Forgeries’? What can people expect to see?

Well, the title of my exhibition says it all really - the concept was to rip off famous works of art and re-create them in felt! The idea sprung up as a joke whilst brainstorming what the heck I could do, and stuck. As someone who dreams of making a living by making things, the possibility of this ever becoming a reality grows more remote, naive and desperate with each passing year. So what else was I to do but turn to art forgery to make ends meet?! 

People can expect to see very lumpy copies of masterpieces from Monet, Picasso, Mondrian, Miro, Matisse and Nolan.

Your creations are quite intricate, can you describe your processes?  

After I chose which piece to forge, I simplified the work down to it’s basic lines, colours and composition. Using this, I made a stylised template, cut out each felt piece and then stitched like crazy! The stitching really made each piece come to life - I was able to emulate brush strokes, add details and depth to the flat block colours of the felt.

What were some of the challenges you faced in putting together your pieces for the show?

The biggest challenge was choosing which pieces to copy. Each work needed to be instantly recognisable, but also able to be translated into felt and still look good! I learnt quickly to stay away from people after an attempt to copy ‘The Mona Lisa’ resulted in a weird disfigured pink blob! Finishing off and framing each work was also tricky and involved lots of cardboard and double sided tape! I began to lose confidence in my idea, abilities and work the closer the exhibition opening got, but fortunately for me, my very kind and encouraging husband and friends pulled me out of my artists’ funk and got me to the finish line in one piece!

To View photos of the exhibition opening, click here