A taste of a poison paradise
2023
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Measurements
- 160.0 × 275.0 cm
- Place/s of Execution
- London, England
- Inscription
- inscribed (vertically) on reverse c.r.: f. Yukhnovich 2023
- Accession Number
- 2023.248
- Department
- Contemporary Art
- Credit Line
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated by July Cao, 2023
© Flora Yukhnovich - Gallery location
- Not on display
- About this work
-
A Taste of a Poison Paradise takes its name from the 2003 Britney Spears’s song Toxic and draws inspiration from Dutch still-life paintings. The painting’s explosion of petals is built up with layers of loose, nearly transparent brushstrokes applied over a period of several months. The effect is something between abstraction and figuration; a flower captured not in its perfect blooming, but in flux, suspended in the airless moment between two breaths. Yukhnovich’s choice of flower painting as a subject matter and pop culture as a filter is deliberate. Both have historically been coded ‘feminine’ and, it follows, regarded as frivolous and low brow. Yukhnovich’s critical exploration of these subjects is a radical attempt to treat seriously culture previously deemed inconsequential.
