1 June - 2 July 2011

Salinity has posed a major problem for civilisations throughout history, from ancient Mesopotamia over four thousand years ago to present-day Australia. Along the Murray-Darling basin, known as Australia's 'food bowl' because it produces up to ninety 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 ground-water.

Still Life: The Food Bowl is made from this groundwater salt. It draws on the still life genre as an artistic tradition that emerged as current agricultural practices were being developed, bringing new food produce to the tables of a rising European bourgeois class. The themes of consumption, luxury, vanity and mortality portrayed in these early paintings are re-enacted in this installation, now made entirely from salt.

The salt works bring focus to the environmental cost of agricultural production and connect 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 read more about this exhibition click here:

Cash Brown in conversation with Ken + Julia Yonetani

Please note there will be an artist/curator floor talk at Artereal Gallery from 2– 3 pm on Saturday 18 June  2011.

Supported by the Australian Network for Art and Technology, Sunrise 21 and Murray - Darling Freshwater Research Centre in association with the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its art funding and advisory board. This work emerged from a Synapse residency in Mildura and versions will also be shown at: Mildura Palimpsest #8: Collaborators and Saboteurs, 9-11 September, 2011 and GV Art, London, 6 October - 22 November 2011.

Special thanks also to Mark Jensen, Head Chef at Red Lantern and author of 'The Urban Cook: Cooking and Eating for a Sustainable Future', for opening this exhibition.

Read about this exhibition:

Sydney Morning Herald

Daily Telegraph

ABC News

ABC Radio National

Metro, Sydney Morning Herald

Artlink

Keywords: Ken + Julia Yonetani, Still Life: The Food Bowl Art Exhibition