We Are What We Eat

An exploration of prison food by the Pentonville Prison Art Group

2022

In 2021, the Art Group at Pentonville prison agreed to take part in the Museum of London’s collecting programme, London Eats. I was commissioned by the museum to develop the project with the group, facilitating a series of workshops with group members, and acting as their adviser and researcher as the project progressed.

In agreeing to take part, the group made a series of upfront requests. They would contribute artworks as long as they could give an honest account of food at Pentonville; the museum would pay for their art materials; the art should ultimately be made public; and members could request research to help with their art, to make up for their lack of digital access.

Six months later, through more than 40 artworks and texts, the group presented its response in the booklet We Are What We Eat. Ahmed G., JK, M.I.A. and the rest of the team succeeded despite the conditions they faced. For six weeks of the project, due to Covid restrictions, group members were confined to their two-person, 12ft x 8ft cells for more than 23 hours a day.

Drawing on artists including Barbara Walker, Heather Phillipson, and William Hogarth, group members proposed a link between the low-quality food on offer and poor mental health; documented the struggles of people who cannot afford to buy food for their cells; and questioned why they are offered no food between 5pm and 11.30am.

At the same time, the booklet highlights ways people in Pentonville make the most of their circumstances and how—for those with enough money to cook in their cells—food offers a chance for self-expression and community.

The museum acquired a copy of We Are What We Eat in October 2022, along with a series of prison objects chosen by the group. The group presented its findings to prison managers at a specially-arranged launch of the booklet in the prison library.

Click here to download a pdf version of the finished booklet.

A hard copy of the booklet can be accessed at the National Poetry Library on the 5th Floor of the Southbank Centre, in London.

Read more:

‘If only my tastebuds could paint’, The Guardian, 7 March 2023

‘We Are What We Eat: food in prison’, Museum of London, 2 December 2022

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