Australian Salt Sculpture Explores Life & Death at the Venice Biennale

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
By Steve Meachem

Ken and Julia Yonetani's pieces, cast from salt. Photo: Edwina Pickles

AUSTRALIA - According to the Bible, Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt when she turned to look at the destruction of Sodom. Fortunately, Ken Yonetani's wife and collaborator, Julia, had a happier fate. She merely had to help the Japanese-born installation artist create pillars of salt for their latest exhibition, which also examines the potential collapse of a hedonistic civilisation. The couple - who represented Australia at the 2009 Venice Biennale - have spent months making sculptures out of groundwater salt at their studio in the Blue Mountains. The result is Still Life: The Food Bowl, an installation of exquisite life-size objects cast entirely out of salt. ''We used salt as a metaphor for life and death,'' Ken says. ''Salt has lots of spiritual meanings around the world.''[link]