Coming soon to Bendigo Art Gallery is The Last Supper – a new installation by Ken and Julia Yonetani made entirely from salt. This large-scale sculpture of a table laid with an abundance of food measures more than nine metres in length, and develops themes from the artists’ prominent 2011 work Still Life: The Food Bowl.
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Commissioned by Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre and developed during a residency, The Last Supper draws on the still life genre as an artistic tradition that emerged as current agricultural practices were being developed and new foods were introduced to the tables of a rising European bourgeois class. Themes of consumption, luxury, vanity and mortality portrayed in early paintings are re-enacted through this installation.
The artwork also addresses the artists’ environmental concerns around increasing levels of salinity in Australia. Salinity has posed a major problem for civilisations throughout history, from ancient Mesopotamia more than 4000 years ago to present-day Australia. Along the Murray-Darling Basin, known as Australia’s “food bowl” because it produces up to 90 per cent of Australia’s fresh food, 550,000 tonnes of salt is pumped out of the ground every year to try and stem the increasing rise of highly saline groundwater.
Using salt as the artwork medium brings focus to the environmental cost of agricultural production and connects with the historical associations of salt – as a powerful, sacred substance that maintains life by enabling food preservation, but also induces the death of ecosystems and the collapse of empires. Salt becomes a metaphor for the rise and fall of civilizations throughout history, and the issues of environmental decline, climate change, and food security that face us on a global scale today.
To coincide with this display, the gallery is hosting a special event, The Artist’s Table. from 2:30pm to 4:30pm on Saturday, August 15. where visitors can indulge in an afternoon that celebrates the unique connection between food and art, and pays homage to artists who have connected with this theme.
The event will begin with a discussion around The Last Supper, and journey through the gallery’s own collection, highlighting works from the Victorian era that reveal culinary customs and traditions, ending with a sumptuous afternoon tea banquet.
Tickets are $40/$35 members, and bookings are essential by Tuesday, August 11. The event is presented by the Friends of Bendigo Art Gallery and the Gallery Guides.
The Last Supper will be on display at Bendigo Art Gallery from July 18 to September 13. Entry is by donation.
