You dream of chocolate flowing richly, smoothly down a fountain, of a coral reef, alive with colour, conjured from isomalt sugar and of thousands of delicate, handmade flowers, each one good enough to eat.
When you wake, you work, then you work harder and you make your dreams your reality.
Janice Wong is a Singaporean chef and artist whose love of food and creative vision have propelled her to the forefront of the edible art industry. It has to be the best job in the world. “Yes, yes,” she says. “I have been very blessed.”
Her chocolate bonbons, macarons and intricate desserts launched her career but it is in her edible installations that Wong stretches her imagination. She has filled rooms with marshmallows that can be plucked from the ceiling and dressed walls with gumnuts made of lychee.
It is a career that has taken her around the world and this week she will land in Perth from London to thrill guests at the Art Gallery of WA Foundation’s Gala on Saturday.
The gala is a major fundraising event to help support and promote women in the arts and Wong is a perfect fit. “It’s going to be amazing. I can’t wait,” says Colin Walker, the art gallery’s director.
The gallery began working with Wong about six months ago and has helped shape the design of her immersive installation, which will have a distinctly WA feeling.
When we speak, she is busy working on a deal with the department store Selfridges and enjoying England’s baking hot weather.
She isn’t giving away all her secrets for Perth but says guests at the gala will enter through a tunnel adorned with handcrafted sweet treats. “There will be edible artworks in the tunnel,” she says. “Our chocolate bonbons, macarons, some choux puff as well.”
While some of Wong’s installations are designed to last for as long as three months, that won’t be the case in Perth, but it will be available for the public to see on Sunday. “People in Australia are very civilised,” Wong says. “They’ll take photos; eat off the walls.”
Wong previously visited WA when she appeared at the Margaret River Gourmet Escape in 2016. She has also spent time in the Eastern States, including an appearance on MasterChef Australia in 2015, when contestants were given two hours and 15 minutes to make her devilishly tricky cassis plum dessert.
The cassis plum asks cooks to conjure yuzu caviar and yuzu rubies, plum liqueur jelly, raspberry “crispies”, cassis blackcurrant pastilles and a yoghurt mousse. It is almost too magical to eat.
“I loved doing MasterChef and would do it again in a heartbeat,” she says. “I was supposed to do the anniversary one in 2020 but COVID happened.”
Wong grew up in a family steeped in the financial world and was an economics student at the National University of Singapore when she decided to pursue her passion for food.
“I wanted to find purpose. I didn’t want to work in a bank and face screens and all that. I really want to give back to society in whatever way I can — whether it is inspiration, or a lot of good memories.
“Life is like that. You want to give back and inspire, then you feel inspired and that really is a sustainable passion, which to me is very important, to take it through 30 or 40 years.”
After graduating in 2006, Wong enrolled in the renowned culinary school Le Cordon Bleu Paris, where she studied to be a pastry chef. She would go on to work as a trainee in acclaimed French restaurant Les Amis in Singapore, then under Will Goldfarb at Room 4 Dessert in New York.
She opened her first business, 2am : dessertbar, in Singapore’s Holland Village in 2007 and the Janice Wong Singapore brand was established in 2014 to market a range of confectionery products.
Her international empire now spans restaurants, dessert bars, retail ventures and her edible art installations, created for both public and private events, including for brands such as Bally, Prada, Ferrari, Hermes and L’Occitane.
“It was an an opportunity as an artist to redefine things,” she says. “We started in 2011 and we were one of the first to change the landscape on how sweet buffets would be, or even canapes, and we continue to do that.”
Wong created her magical Underwater Labyrinth in 2011, and it was recreated in 2016 as part of the Singapore Art Museum’s Imaginarium exhibition. The corals, which filled the gallery and clung to its walls, were made from 1100kg of isomalt sugar and 200kg of chocolate.
“I am a diver,” Wong says. “I want my work to become talking pieces, to show what is happening around the world. That part is very important to me.”
A Hanging and Vertical Glow Garden went on display at MGM Macau in 2018. Inspired by flora and fauna, it featured 20,000 flowers made from 300kg of sugar paste, hand-painted in edible glow-in-the-dark paint.
Her 7m-high chocolate fountain, with its streams of dark, milk and white chocolate, also opened in Macau in 2018 but had to be closed after COVID-19 struck.
Wong says the inspiration for her work comes from cultural exchange. “I am very blessed to have met people from all walks of life,” she says. “I eat and hear different stories of food, whether living in another country or being in someone’s house. Different textures, different smells.
“As an artist, I have an open mind and embrace all these cultural exchanges. Food is my medium.”
While guests at the gala will be dazzled by Wong’s daring, it is also a night of serious intent. Walker has been driven to extend the gallery’s reach, ambition and creative partnerships since he became its director in 2020.
Money raised on the night will go towards launching the Sheila Invitational, a triennial exhibition in partnership with AGWA and the Sheila Foundation which is expected to launch in 2024 and which seeks to write women into the narrative of Australian art.
The foundation, formed in 2019, was inspired by Lady Sheila Cruthers, whose landmark collection of Australian women’s art is held by The University of Western Australia.
“Far more women than men graduate as artists but this is not reflected in art collections,” Walker says. “Broader representation on the walls is one thing but a deep dive into the history of the art is another.
“We want to also look at the background and the lived experiences — good and bad — the glass ceiling, the opportunities.”
It is hoped the Invitational will focus on at least six Australian women artists, selected by a national panel, and provide a retrospective of their work.
Walker is also keen to continue the gallery’s collaboration with Wong, particularly in its design store.
“She makes these fantastic edible chocolate crayons,” he says. “You can pick them up, play with them, take them home and eat them. It’s a really important part of the experience at the gallery.”
Just don’t expect Wong to eat too many of them. “I don’t really eat desserts anymore,” she says. “In my 20s and early 30s, it was tiramisu. As you grow older, your habits change and I just tend to eat dark chocolate now.”
The 2022 AGWA Foundation Gala is on this Saturday, August 27. Tickets are $850, which includes a $500 tax-deductible donation to AGWA to help support women in the arts.