From photography to bronze casting, and video to vegetables, Acquired Tastes explores the complex human relationships surrounding food, which not only keeps us alive but structures all aspects of our experience: politics, the economy, ecology, and social diversity.

Selections from Museum London’s permanent collection come together with loans of contemporary Canadian art from across Ontario and Quebec. Artists include Sara Cwynar, Tonia Di Risio, Aganetha Dyck, Arturo Herrera, Catherine Mary Newcomb, Marc Antoine Phaneuf, Kelly Wood, and many more.

Acquired Tastes features rituals of the nightly family dinner, cultural celebration and hospitality, alongside rigid institutional routines such as those found in prisons. It references the value of food, including varieties labelled as “junk” and “fast,” alongside overconsumption and waste. With frequent humour, the works express the importance of edibles on an individual level and as larger symbols of class, power, and beauty. The latter theme encompasses traditional art forms such as still life, and contemporary expressions that involve the bounty of the natural and agricultural worlds, sometimes literally as a subject.