FEAST

Ushaw House and Gardens, Durham, UK

A site-specific installation commissioned by Ushaw House and Gardens, Durham to celebrate the ‘President’s Feast’ that was once a tradition at Ushaw every January. Feast, co-created with volunteers at Ushaw as part of their Connected Communities Project, is large, three-dimensional paper collage comprised of hundreds of images of food presented on the table in the Parlour.

Recognising food and feasting as a cultural activity that has been a popular subject in art history since at least the ancient Roman times, each photograph is digitally manipulated using Photoshop to give it a ‘painterly’ appearance – reminiscent of the opulent still-life paintings of food from 17th Century Dutch Masters.

Made using a combination of digital images sourced online and those submitted by volunteers working at Ushaw, each image is printed, cut out and placed on a stepped cardboard structure built on the twelve-meter-long table where the masters of the Catholic seminary and school would dine. 

Some of the images are ‘brought to life’ using the augmented reality programme Artivive (https://www.artivive.com/).  When certain images in the collage are viewed on a phone or iPad using the free Artivive App, they automatically trigger a short time laps video of the food gradually disappearing – being virtually consumed.