The Sandwich Project

In 2017, the AGW embarked on a two-year commitment to The Sandwich Project. Last year the project considered Old Sandwich Town (amalgated with Windsor in 1935) and the notion that food is a vehicle through which to map history and challenge gender stereotypes. In its second year, the exhibition considers the ways in which food is a metaphor for economic consciousness. For example, works about sandwiches, bread, meat, food labels, and restaurant culture offer a framework through which to contemplate the economy of food and how food informs social infrastructures. Through the themes of food sustainability, consumerism, and consumption, the exhibition considers the effects of food on a community, a culture’s economic growth, and the overall well-being of the body.  

Each exhibition offers a unique perspective through which to experience and understand the meaning and symbolism within the economies of food. Technologies surrounding food preservation, the politics of the slaughterhouse, animal rights and welfare and the business of farming inform how and what we eat. Signaling innovative and timely conversations about food, where it comes from, what its value is, and how its commercialization impacts its meaning and effects on the body thus provides a context for the ways in which carbohydrates, fruit, vegetables and protein are being explored in art.