Food has served as inspiration and medium for many contemporary artists, evoking desire, anger or delight. Think of Claes Oldenburg’s gargantuan inverted ice cream cone on top of a shopping centre in Germany, or Canadian artist Terence Koh’s sculptures of Michael Jackson moulded from Hershey’s chocolate. The idea that edible art could offer a delicious, rather than purely intellectual, experience is relatively new, but today’s food creators are blithely blurring the lines between culinary and visual arts. As a chef, Wong strives to bring gustatory pleasure through her creations, and she sees food as a playful way to bridge cultural differences. “A lollipop is never just a lollipop,” she says. “What’s considered acceptable to eat varies from country to country.”

Japanese artist Ayako Suwa uses food to explore “the possibilities of taste” and emotions. Her inspiration comes from nature, and her art – which is displayed in galleries and luxury retail shops or woven into her travelling “Guerilla Restaurant” performances – is visceral and provocative. Suwa says the aim is to reignite a primal sense of curiosity. As a child, the budding artist presented her playmates with dishes composed of found objects such as plants, shells and insects, and this fascination with the intersection between taste and imagination persists in her work. “Food does not merely pass from the mouth to the stomach,” she says.

Combining her training as an artist with an intuitive feel for ingredients, Suwa creates edible sculptures in miniature that juxtapose unusual flavours and textures. A cut plum filled with balsamic vinegar and topped with red seaweed becomes a “lingering taste of regret with overtones of anger welling up,” while “shame and joy” is a combination of mushroom, fresh cream and mint.

“My work is not about nutritional value, a gourmet experience or familiar tastes. The people who decide to eat my food are seeking a ‘new value of food’ that is closely tied to instinct and curiosity,” Suwa says.

“Imagine the feeling of a primitive man when he discovered a sea cucumber for the first time.”

While Suwa seeks to distil large concepts into bite-sized packages, Sam Bompas and Harry Parr celebrate whimsy with grand gestures. Referring to themselves as “food architects,” Bompas and Parr are neither professional chefs nor trained artists, but they work with food in order to engage all five of the senses. “We discovered that if we applied the same principles of architecture to food, we could come up with something extraordinary,” Bompas says.

Inspired by the fanciful jelly sculptures of the Victorian era, Bompas and Parr started out with an exhibition of gelatin desserts made from moulds designed by architectural luminaries. Their work has become increasingly more complex. Their list of outré installations includes a chocolate rock-climbing wall – complete with a four-ton chocolate waterfall – and a dazzling display of multisensory fireworks accompanied by fruit-flavoured clouds.

Last autumn, the pair collaborated with the acclaimed production company Done and Dusted – scientists, instrument makers and composers – to curate a fully immersive work of performance art called “Symphony in Blue,” in honour of whisky maker Johnny Walker’s Blue Label Scotch. The travelling production, which debuted in London, occupied an entire building and featured lavish stage sets.

Actors clad in prohibition-era costumes greeted the guests on arrival and led them through a series of surprising “sensory experiences” – among them, a swirling fog of atomised whisky that recalls the stormy weather off the coast of Scotland. The event culminated in an epic feast and the unveiling of a specially constructed organ, dubbed “The Flavour Conductor”, designed to produce notes and tunes that correspond to aromas and flavours.

“We’re experimenting with how to choreograph things around a meal to create stories,” Bompas says. “Art is about entertainment. It can provoke you to think about very different subjects, or it can be joyful. We are doing things that people will choose to do in their precious leisure time.”

INSTA-CUISINE

is the go-to place for tantalising pictures of food. Dishes dressed beautifully by chefs and home cooks alike often leave followers drooling. But some talented artists have gone above and beyond #FoodPorn - these creative minds have combined their discerning eye with everyday food, and the inspiring results have brought art back to the culinary world.

Samantha Lee

Fun pictures created using onigiri and nori, originally designed for her children

Ida Skivenes

Cute depictions of animals and scenes and re-creations of famous artworks, all using toast as a base

Amber Locke

"Veg art" with bold and beautiful colours. Some works commissioned by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver