When The Community Cookout Got Cancelled

Melissa Newbery Welcome

Jackfruit fritters, Painted canvas table spread, Canvas board sign, Table
2022

"When The Community Cookout Got Cancelled" was initially supposed to be a live cooking demonstration where a community could be formed in the institution by sharing food and experiencing the processes before it ends up on a plate. Due to restrictions, the work had to be adapted and was initially not permitted to have food at all. However, the eating experience was core to the work, and I decided to prepare the fritters at home and bring them in on the day of the PV.

The work relates to the themes of FEAST as the work's core values stem from the shared eating experience. Inspired by the "cookouts" I experienced throughout my life, the act of bringing a plate, cooking and eating together was a fundamental element of shared experiences. How do you get this experience into an institution where everything had been online two years prior? Food was my answer, and I adapted my saltfish fritter recipe to be vegan and gluten-free to allow more people to engage with the work.

Inspired by the closure of community hubs and the heavy regulation when creating grassroots communes, this intervention explores the community action formulated by bottom-up action rather than top-down.

Presenting an interactive edible table spread filled with jackfruit fritters, a painted table cloth and condiments; this work focuses on disrupting the viewing experience in a gallery setting. Exploring the shared feelings of eating and the individual reactions to consumption (e.g. oily hands creating hyper-focus on touch).

This work was adapted from an initial proposal due to Health and Safety, Risk Assessments and Institutional backlash prohibiting the initial live cooking demonstration.

Melissa Newbery Welcome

Melissa Newbery Welcome was born and raised in South London. They are a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the individual and collective experience in spaces. Their work ranges from installation, drawing, photography and social interventions. Within their research, Melissa approaches from a city perspective on humanity subjects and intervenes with a personal cultural approach that often highlights their mixed-race, working-class upbringing.


They often explore the human experience as an individual within a collective through public interventions exploring the accessibility of art amongst communities. Their work has been used to communicate and articulate, often highlighting and tackling issues through proactivity. Melissa displays multimedia pieces of work to be ‘experienced’ by the viewer within site-specific installations. These research-heavy projects look at the past, present and future implications of globalisation and the rippling effects of the industrial and colonial.

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