Sense of Taste, works by Ken + Julia Yonetani

Sense of Taste by Ken and Julia Yonetani is inspired by the 1618 painting by Jan Brueghel the Elder of the same name. One of a series on the five senses, it depicts a new world based on unfettered consumption of luxury goods, at a time when expanding markets, colonisation and agricultural revolutions were feeding the increasingly lavish and abundant tables of the European upper class. Nearly 400 years later, Ken and Julia Yonetani’s Sense of Taste ponders our obsession with sensual and material pleasures, reconnecting our sense of taste to the environmental impacts of what is on the dinner table. The exhibition comprises two main works, Sweet Barrier Reef and Still Life, the first made out of sugar and the second made entirely from salt. In both works, sugar and salt become metaphors for human desire, colonialism, and a culture of hedonism, as well as the essential link to reconnect us back to a spiritual world of nature and magic.