D
riving through the historic village of Wollombi, the last thing one expects is to be confronted by a three-metre high, steel grater - yes, a grater: the kind you use for cheese or carrots - standing majestically on a rise overlooking the quaint village shops. Each year from November to January, strange appearances like this occur in this sleepy quarter of the Hunter Valley. This is the time when the highly acclaimed exhibition project Sculpture in the Vineyards takes over the Wollombi Valley. Jimmy Rix’s ‘Greater Grater’ was part of the exhibition two years ago, and this year’s entries are no less extraordinary. Ranging from sophisticated, modernist artworks not out of place in an inner city gallery, to oversized outdoor pieces that revel in their exposure to sun and wind, set against a backdrop of hillsides and valleys, to whimsical and often ephemeral works specifically designed for their situation in the vineyards, the exhibition celebrates sculpture in all its forms.
PICTURED ABOVE TOP LEFT TO RIGHT Harrie Fasher’s ‘Head in the Clouds’, Penny Philpott’s ‘Chained’, PICTURED ABOVE Felicity Yorsten and Cassandra Daw’s ‘Ichonotraces’ PICTURED LEFT Senden Blackwood’s ‘Asura’
In 2012 Sculpture in the Vineyards marks ten years of bringing outstanding art to the Hunter Valley. The project’s Director, Tara Morelos, is thrilled with the number and quality of 2012’s entries, which see the event becoming the largest outdoor sculpture exhibition in Australia. This year, 100 artists have had their work selected for exhibition from over 130 entries.
They include highly respected artists such as Rae Bolotin, who shows regularly with Stella Downer Gallery in the Danks Street arts precinct. Coincidentally, Stella Downer was instrumental in establishing the first Sculpture in the Vineyards in 2002. Rae’s work has focussed on plant forms for many years and her sculpture ‘Seed’, at Undercliff Winery, continues that interest. Inspired by tiny seeds found near her studio on the edge of Wollemi National Park, it is constructed from hand-beaten stainless steel and then coloured through a chemical modification of the metal’s surface. She explains, “It is done in a vacuum chamber with a variety of gases pumped in at different time intervals. This technology was first invented by Russian spaceship engineers and it is this juxtaposition between art and science, organic and steel, where I tease out the meaning of the static forms, bringing them to life.” Will Coles also works with contemporary technology to create artworks that are often undetectable as artworks. Using a sophisticated and almost indestructible resinlike material, Will casts modified versions of everyday utilitarian objects such as mobile phones, televisions and suitcases that he frequently leaves in unexpected places - at bus stops, in parks, outside buildings: the apparently discarded detritus of modern life. In ‘Sushi’, discarded, fish-shaped sauce containers lie scattered across a stretch of grass at Stonehurst Wines - a permanent reminder of a fleeting picnic, perhaps? His work has an affinity with that of Banksy, the camera-shy English graffiti artist, as a form of commentary on contemporary society. Some artists focus on the transient in quite a different way. Every year, Japanese-born Akira Kamada spends months collecting vine prunings, which he weaves into huge sitespecific sculptures. His works are part of, and emerge from, the landscape among which he lives and works. Other works, such as Penny Philpott’s ‘Chained’, are designed so as to only have meaning in the site of exhibition. The chains wrapped around the ancient wooden posts at Undercliff Vineyard could be easily mistaken for farm equipment. Strangely, this is what makes them so successful as artworks. The point of site-specific art is that it has its greatest resonance and meaning only at the location for which it has been created.
BREATHE summer 2012/13
41