Food: Bigger Than the Plate @ The V&A

Ten Second Review: Occasionally interesting but feels more like a curated journey through eco Instagram accounts than a truly developed exhibition. Full of nice ideas but falls short of being truly engaging.

I wrote my undergrad dissertation on the subject of the high price of food. It looked at how mass production of food stuffs have affected the communities involved in production and the consumer who buys and eats them. It ended up a little muddled because I had so much to say and a word count to say it in. This might the reason that I am quite sympathetic to the team who put together this exhibition. By trying to address so many aspects of the ecological and social aspects of food, it falls short on truly engaging with any single part.

The exhibition is split into several sections with overarching goal of addressing sustainability in food production and consumption. How we could be dealing with waste products, how we could develop farming technologies, what new ingredients new food production processes are able to create etc. It is fairly well laid out and does a good job in being quite informative about the projects it is highlighting. It ends with a canapé bar type thing where you pick several qualifiers from a list of maybe 20 (zero waste, delicious, sustainable or high in protein, affordable, cutting edge and so on) and they make you a canapé that fits your brief. Relish made from rejected fruit and veg, micro herbs grown in underground warehouses, new manufactured proteins; the types of products that are currently being featured in the pages of magazines as hot rising trends.

The overall message of the exhibition does ring out quite loud; we need to address how to utilise waste products while minimising waste and educating the public. The problem is that as the bell rings out it starts to stray from its original note and ends up a little off key. The basic message is there but trying to hock waste materials as now premium design materials means that the V&A is essentially just advertising for companies who are charging money for nothing. The point of a circular manufacturing system, where products are dismantled and reused to make new products, should mean that not only is there a diminished cost to the environment but hopefully for the consumer too. They feature a company making coffee cups from reconstituted coffee grounds and I was sold. I immediately looked up where I could find them only to discover the V&A shop had them and that they were £20 each. Similarly, a range of plant pots made of a terracotta like material that was actually cow manure, started at a price much higher than any basic pot terracotta pot of the same size might cost you.

I am more than willing to pay for beautiful design but this isn’t that. It is not that the designs of any of these items was particularly stunning, they had in fact been designed to look like a slightly rougher version of the thing they are replicating. It is almost as though there is an odd tax on trying to be conscious of the environment. The argument is inevitably that these projects are expensive to start up but I have no doubt that if they take off they aren’t about to start dropping the price of the products to fall in line with something representative of their cost to produce.

The exhibition is fine and to be fair it would probably be incredibly interesting for people approaching the subjects for the first time. I don’t think it is hugely interesting for those already somewhat knowledgeable about food production, alternative materials and zero waste ideas but I do think the actual design of the exhibition is quite nice. It would be good if the buying team for the gift shop had taken the exhibition in to a account a little more. Many of the products that the exhibition has pushed are available but there are also things like single use, highly packaged teas that really undercut the message of the exhibit. I have come to expect a level of care and attention from the V&A and this seemed a sidestep from that.

I would not dissuade anyone one from visiting the exhibit, bringing more light to the projects it discusses and ideas it outlines is very important, but I wouldn’t force everyone through the door. Overall it feels like a really nicely curated Instagram account which, while worth a follow, might not be worth the price of admission. The information is interesting but it doesn’t feel wholly enhanced from the information you might find in a general internet search. If you are looking to get into zero waste, start learning about ideas surrounding circular economies or introduce friends and families to the ideas, then this is a good exhibition. If you are looking to enhance your existing knowledge then this might not be the best thing for you.

Food: Bigger Than the Plate is on at the V&A until the 20 October 2019