Chandeliers made from uranium glass and a nine-metre banquet table made entirely of salt have taken over the National Gallery of Australia’s contemporary art space on the shore of Lake Burley Griffin. A new exhibition, The Last Temptation: the art of Ken + Julia Yonetani is a provocative and stunning exhibition by the acclaimed Japanese and Australian artist collaborators that highlights issues related to natural resources and dangers to the natural environment.
The featured installation, Crystal Palace: The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nuclear Nations (2013), is a direct response to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident, where chandeliers are reconfigured to glow with UV light and are decorated with specially-sourced uranium glass.
Each chandelier represents a country that operates nuclear power stations and is of a scale relative to that country’s nuclear output. As well as being aesthetically astounding, the work is accessible and engaging. For the artists, the aim is to get viewers thinking about the dangers of this style of power generation:
“Presented in darkness, the glass chandeliers and tubes glow with an eerie bright green light indicating the presence of radiation. We hope to prompt viewers to react in their own way to this radioactive presence.”
Never fear, the uranium glass contains very small traces of uranium within the glass, and is legal and poses no health risks.
Alongside these opulent chandeliers sits The Last Supper, a nine-metre table made of over one tonne of groundwater salt sourced from the Murray-Darling Basin featuring a variety of foodstuffs in the form of an exquisite banquet. Here, salt is a metaphor for the death of the land, sacrificed in the production and consumption of what has become ‘The Last Supper’.
Ken + Julia Yonetani have been collaborating on projects since 2009 and have exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Venice Biennale in 2009, in the United Kingdom, Finland, and Germany in 2011-2012, at the Singapore Biennale in 2013, and in their first major solo show in Europe at the Abbey de Maubuisson in Paris in 2015. This exhibition is the first large survey of the Yonetani’s work to be shown in Australia, and is most definitely worth a visit.
The Last Temptation exhibition is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia-Japan Foundation of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as part of its celebrations in 2016 marking the 40th anniversary of the Australia-Japan Foundation and the 1976 Basic Treaty for Friendship and Cooperation between Australia and Japan.
Until Sunday 3 April. nga.gov.au/contemporary/
