Flood: Bigger than the Plate

V&A, 2019

An exhibition about the politics, pleasures, and future of food.

Could we collectively build a food future that is more sustainable, fair and delicious than the one currently on offer? This exhibition brought together projects by over seventy artists and designers who are creatively addressing this question in collaboration with scientists, chefs and local communities. 

Organised in four sections – Composting, Farming, Trading and Eating – it took visitors on a journey through the food cycle, beginning with waste. The show culminated with an eating experience in which visitors could design and taste their own food future. 

Curator: Catherine Flood
Co-curator: May Rosenthal Sloan
Exhibition designer: Juri Nishi, V&A Design Studio
Graphic design: Judith Brugger 
Prop makers: Nick Sellek and Caroline Perry
Senior Exhibition Manager: Olivia Oldroyd
Images copyright V&A

“

Witty, shocking and charmingly bonkers. When it comes to hard hitting arguments and radical ideas this show will cajole even the most ardent sceptics of environmentalism into engaging with them with an open mind

Alastair Sooke, The Telegraph

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Quirky, surprising, beautiful, revolting, tasty, synthetic, thought-provoking, eye-brow raising but never, ever dull.

Mecca Ibrahim, Women in the Food Industry 

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FOOD: Bigger than the Plate addresses the issues in a way that is subversive, humorous and wondrous… Its tantalising recipe of science and aesthetics is playfully didactic as it imagines endless possibilities of food futures as well as exploring the age-old relationship between culture and food

Kristina Foster, Culture Whisper

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You’ll leave feeling blown away by the possibilities

Harriet Addison, The Times

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In each room of Food: Bigger than the Plate we are reminded that food will always be a complex interplay of politics and pleasure. But the final call to arms here – and rightly, in my view – is to pleasure

Bee Wilson, Times Literary Supplement 

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This is a show that will stick with you, encouraging you to interrogate why you eat what you do, rather than scarfing it down and getting back to work.

Tabish Khan, The Londonist

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FOOD stretched the limits of traditional definitions of food, art, and design, and pushed the spatial boundaries between the kitchen, the laboratory, the dining room, the artist’s studio, and the museum space. 

Laura Eliza Enriquez, The Senses and Society (Routledge)

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The viewer was not treated as a passive consumer, but rather hailed as a being who actively and constantly engages with reality via food and taste – in both senses of the term.

Laura Eliza Enriquez, The Senses and Society (Routledge)

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