Time and space from a lens
BY ANGELA CROMPTON
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The boom of cannons and the crack of shotgun fire echoes around Marlborough in the annual war against birds in the vineyards.
It is harvest time.
To mark the season, Harvest is one of two exhibitions opening in Blenheim's Millennium Art Gallery on Saturday.
Photographs by Kevin Judd and Jim Tannock will show the final stages and work procedures to create another year's vintage, and 47 paintings on wood will show four people's experiences of harvest day over 11 hours.
Auntsfield Harvest 2006 Comes a Time is the title of the combined works by Auckland artist Sharon Vickers. In 2006 she was commissioned by Auntsfield vineyard owners Graeme and Linda Cowley to paint scenes of their harvest.
In a written summary of the works, Vickers says she was exploring time and place in her painting in 2006 and decided to continue that concept.
The oil on ply paintings were made from photos four Cowley family members took on four separate days during the March 2006 harvest.
Deirdre Cowley says Vickers instructed her, her husband Ben and his parents Graeme and Linda Cowley to each select a day. On it, they had to carry a disposable camera and a stopwatch with them for 11 hours. On the hour, the stopwatch set off an alarm and they had to stop what they were doing and photograph where they were at.
The first alarm went off for Deirdre as she was cycling to another part of the vineyard. Vickers made a painted version of the image captured: The front wheel of a bike.
Other images offering a glimpse of harvest day at the Auntsfield vineyard include a tray of freshly-baked scones just out of the oven, a doorway, a small boy standing outside, grapevine leaves, the edge of a grape basket, grapes being sorted, and a seat outside, waiting for someone to sit on it.
Painted in oil, the images appear on gesso-coated ply. Their circular shape is a reference to Ben and Deirdre's work in the film industry for 20 years – he as a cameraman, she doing actors' make-up.
The family already owned an earlier time-capsule series of paintings Vickers had done – it showed 10-minute scenes through the window of an aeroplane leaving Blenheim.
Vickers is also a relative, Deirdre says, connected through the writer Joy Cowley.
The 2010 harvest at Auntsfield is a little later than usual, but preparations were under way last Saturday. Deirdre and Ben's kitchen was filled with the aroma of freshly-baked biscuits – some of the food being prepared for people helping them at harvest to share.
Family members from the North Island come down and camp out in caravans to help out, Deirdre says. "We pick [grapes] together and we eat together."
Harvest opens to the public on Saturday, as does Appropriation and Interference, by Christchurch-based artist Nigel Buxton, in the Millennium's main gallery.
- The Marlborough Express
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