Food and art: eat the meal of the film

From a festival where you can eat the food you see in a movie to an exhibition of food-related art, there's no shortage of nourishment in our culture

(Columbia Pictures)

In the right pair of hands, food can be transformed into a work of art. Whether by a chef in one of the world's finest kitchens experimenting with flavours, textures and presentation or by an artist who uses food in their work; it can be a lot more than something we simply consume. There have long been links between food and art, with food a recurring subject matter for a wide range of artists, from 17th- century still-life painters to Andy Warhol, who famously depicted those Campbell's soup cans in the 1960s. And, it seems, the relationship between the two is as strong as ever, with collaborations between chefs and designers, art exhibitions based around what we eat and a celebration of food in film.

If food can evoke certain memories of specific times, places and people, and these memories can be captured and relived through art, then it's no wonder that food is integral to so many thousands of films. At the inaugural London Restaurant Festival, which opens on Thursday, one of the highlights is sure to be Eat Film, a brilliant yet simple idea where viewers can watch a movie, then eat the meal: after Tom Jones you'll eat oysters, after Goodfellas you'll feast on Italian meatballs and after whetting your appetite watching Julie & Julia, you'll tuck into a delicious Beef Bourguignon. "We came up with the idea because whenever we see a film that has food in it, we get really hungry," says the co-director of the festival Simon Davis. "I wanted to do Delicatessen but it's rather ghoulish, and there were lots of debates about The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover and whether we could do that, but it's a tricky one. We've tried to get a good spread of entertaining films with different styles and ethnicity of food."

The highlight of the recent London Design Festival was a black banquet by the jelly mongers Bompas & Parr, an eccentric pair who recently had an edible jelly installation in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. They teamed up with A Razor, A Shiny Knife and Fiona Leahy Design to present an eight-course feast of entirely black food inspired by great historical banquets of the past. Bompas & Parr operate somewhere "in the space between food and architecture", specialising in theatrical food installations such as a replica of St Paul's Cathedral and London in 1666, breathable cocktails and scratch-and-sniff cinema, where aromas from the film are handed out to the audience at screenings. "There's a very strong design element to our work; we like to set ourselves challenges that we think are interesting and involve food," says Sam Bompas. "We want to give people food experiences that they can't explain to their friends and the only way to do that is by doing a lot more than just putting stuff out on a plate".

Food and design are such obvious natural allies: how you present food and all the design aspects that surround it can work together to make it a much more interesting concept than something that merely sits on a plate. Good chefs are artists in their own right, using ingredients rather than a paint palette to create their masterpieces.

Sustainability, waste and the economy are just some of the food related issues that 17 contemporary artists are examining in a touring exhibition, Pot Luck, which arrives at London's PM Gallery, the extension to Sir John Soane's home, at the end of this month. Curated by Cynthia Morrison-Bell and exhibiting artist Anthony Key, the exhibition includes Antony Gormley's Bread Line, which alludes to the forest trail in Hansel and Gretel and the reality of economic divides, Mona Hatoum's offering of a cheese grater as a sculpture, Subodh Gupta's Cheap Rice, a kitchen landscape created from a rickshaw and a collection of brass cooking pots, and Damien Hirst's Last Supper lithographs that mimic pharmaceutical products.

The artists have each chosen food as an effective way to get their message across to an audience. Take Aaron Head, who uses everything from Victoria sponge cake to bread and fruit crates to create art and address issues like global production, the industrial revolution and culture identity. "I see food as a medium in which we've always expressed ourselves," says Head. "We meet over food, use it as religious symbolism and to reinforce our identities. Food has a unique social use in society and there are lots of emotional triggers connected to it, which makes it a good tool to use because it's something that people can relate to." Similarly, Lucy Orta's HortiRecycling Mexican Kitchen, which is showing in the exhibition, is part of an ongoing series based on the recycling of leftover food discarded from supermarkets or restaurants. Like Head, she also believes that working with everyday items helps people to re-engage with art. "Art has a tendency to be isolated and if we want more people to become part of the artistic process, then one way of doing that is to work with the everyday, such as food," she says. "It's a good opportunity to bring people into the artistic domain."

Both artists make a logical point. If an audience can relate to and understand the medium that an artist is working in, they are far more likely to enjoy and appreciate the art. Food and art are both about the senses; not just taste, but smells and associations too. For Pot Luck, the artist Gayle Chong Kwan has produced two pieces of work, the first of which is Cockaigne, a series of photographs that form a mythical, panoramic landscape created from one single food stuff. One photo, "Brigadoon", is based on the Hollywood film and made entirely from porridge oats. "When they were filming, they decided that Scotland didn't look Scottish enough, so they created their own set of Scotland. It's about the theatricalisation of a place, according to a tourist's gaze."

Her second piece is a transportable cardboard memory/ tasting booth that looks at the translation of culture through food. People enter the booth and listen to other people's memories of Chinese spring rolls while eating spring rolls of their own, and in turn, they leave their own memory for the next person. "I'm surprised at how popular the booth has become, but it's really gathered momentum. Food encourages people to think more about their senses within art and there are very specific food smells, like the oil associated with spring rolls, so the cultural translation is very palatable. It links other people's memories up with their own," says Chong Kwan.

However food and art combine, together, they're more than enough to make you hungry.

Pot Luck, PM Gallery, London W5 (020-8567 1227; www.ealing.gov.uk/pmgalleryandhouse) 23 October to 2 January. The London Restaurant Festival 8 to 13 October. Book tickets for Eat Film at www.londonrestaurantfestival.com.