Practice, Research and Professional Development - Food

For my first project this year I wanted my subject matter to be food, as I have often used food in my work but feel I didn't explore it deeply enough. To start I researched very broadly to find potential topics I would be interested in exploring within food. As part of this research I found some artists whose work about food caught my eye.

Carl Kleiner:

These are photographs for a recipe book by Carl Kleiner. I thought this was a very inventive way of presenting the ingredients for each recipe, I love the way he makes geometric shapes out of the food, it creates a sense of order. It also shows a different way of illustrating a cookbook instead of just showing the final product.

David Sykes:

 Another photography piece, I loves the playfulness of David Sykes pieces, making giant food out of everyday objects. Playing with how, for an instant, we see the above as actual food.

Joel Penkman:

At one point I was considering doing a piece celebrating British food and the above is an example of this. I think Penkman's work refers strongly to Wayne Thiebaud's images of cake. The paintings have a nostalgic quality to them.

I was also looking at doing work on current eating trends and while researching this found this infographic about the growing trend of sharing photographs of food on the internet by the 360i blog.

My piece could be focused on information and information graphics could play a large part in that.

Tattfoo:

This piece by Tattfoo is a table mat to raise awareness of not only eating 5 a day of fruit and veg but also eating a variety of colours as well, as different colours provide different nutrients.

I also looked at the work of Marije Vogelzang, whose work investigates how we eat and explores assumptions we have about food. I was considering doing a project and taking a few habits or ways of eating and researching/questioning them.

I also looked at the Experimental Food Society which I will go into more detail later when I visit their show.

In the end, after brainstorming and researching around the topic of food I decided to do a book for the bookartbookshop's 10 year anniversary competition about the future of food based on exaggerations of our current food culture and developing technology.