On the Table

On the Table considers the cultural dichotomies surrounding food, presenting work by 15 Canadian and international artists including Basil AlZeri, Dean Baldwin, Emilie Baltz, Amber Phelps Bondaroff, Victor Cicansky, Song Dong, Keesic Douglas, among others. Using the subject of food to create a space for discussion, the book explores the dualistic experience of taste, the desire and disgust inherent to consumption, and our relationship with eating as created by our ethics, moral culture, geography and personal preferences. On the Table considers relevant contemporary and controversial issues such as over-consumption of resources, waste and recycling, health and obesity, violence of production and capitalist indulgence.

The book allows for the reader to consider the ways that are own tastes are acquired, and how they are constantly changing. On the Table features artworks that challenge our relationship with food and consumption for example through mobile kitchen labs, bread fashioned as backpacks and hats, plastic-made regurgitation and a human face smothered in pink ice-cream and sweets to form a pig-headed figure. As such ideas of taste are presented and critiqued in a strikingly visceral way, provoking both positive and negative reactions from the viewer.

Published in partnership with Dunlop Art Gallery.