Featured: Overall Winner: Constance Howard award for most outstanding entry, Winner: The Artistic Director Award for innovation
Nikki Parmenter: ‘FEELING FRUITY’ (Inside pages)
FEAST
The Members’ Challenge this year encouraged artists to investigate the very broad subject of ‘FEAST.’ Initially, that might focus on the ritual of preparing food for the purpose of celebration and overindulgence, a display of wealth, opulence and status. History, the arts, music and literature provide us with so much evidence and meaning surrounding the reasons for a human desire to come together, gorge and be entertained for a specific purpose. e.g. feast days, birthdays and weddings.
However, there is another side of the coin when you, the onlooker, are emotionally affected by a visual FEAST. A ‘feast for the eyes’; a valley of lupins in New Zealand; a field of tulips in Holland; a garden at Wisley.
The following terms evoke different scenarios:
Feast for the Eyes – we all have those moments of awe when we are emotionally and visually stopped in our tracks
Feast of Food – right through history artists have depicted glorious extravagant moments of celebration through food and drink
Feast of Desire – Bacchanalian Orgy. A bacchanalian feast, derived from the ancient Roman festivals of Bacchus (the god of wine), is characterised by wild, drunken revelry and excess, often involving feasting, music, and dancing.
Midnight Feast – the evocation of excitement and preserved decadence that young people orchestrate with close friends often in subdued lighting with food and drink that are important to them.
The 2025/26 Members’ Challenge was sponsored by Janome.
For more about JANOME visit www.janome.co.uk
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