Bonsai

A couple of postings ago I raised the subject of how one of my themes
concerns size, more specifically, just how big is the subject that
we are looking at. Here is another example of a photo that illustrates that point.

About 18 months ago I discovered that there was a major grower of bonsai in
New Plymouth. Although he is unable to be too public about his collection because
of the danger of being robbed, he was generous towards me in allowing me unlimited access to his beloved plants. This Japanese pine he has been growing for about 40 years.

The photo is small and I printed it in quite a large edition with the aim of it being an
inexpensive Christmas photo, although as much as I like it, it did not really sell that well.
It is possible that its time will come, perhaps not.

I've written on this topic partly because I have a number of students e-mailing me with questions, and 'what are my themes?' is one of the most common. Another one is 'what are your influences?'

The Henderson Arts Trust Residency.

I'm living in this house designed by Ernst Plischke and built, here in Alexandra, in 1950. The louvres
visible in this photo are a device to provide ventilation in order to cope with the fiercely hot weather that this region enjoys, often the hottest weather in the whole of New Zealand. One advantage for many is that this is a major region for growing Pinot Noir. The surrounding landscape has many many vineyards, or as a German friend of mine so enchantingly calls them, wineyards.

The stone used to build the walls of this house was cut from the basement. The white hatch that you see on the side of the wall is used to provide a portal for firewood.

Many people who come up the long sweeping driveway that leads through this three and a half acres to this wonderful building immediately think Frank Lloyd Wright. The flat roof
would not be allowed now. They are required to have more pitch, partly because there is a possibility of snow here, this area also has the coldest winters in New Zealand.

This is a most unusual residency for two reasons. Firstly, it is not media specific, the first recipient, last year was Vincent O'Sullivan, a writer. Secondly, one cannot apply, it is by invitation only.

What Theme Is That?

I am often asked, by students mainly, what my themes are. I'm not sure myself although
I do know the theme of 'just how big is this' is one of them.

I had to go to Queenstown today, a town all agog because Ozzy and Sharon Osborne are holidaying there and making lots of friends. On the way up I was mesmerised by the colour of
autumn leaves caught in the morning sunlight. They looked as if they were on fire. At one stage, after driving past some, notwithstanding the traffic I turned around and went back to have another look. The photo didn't work out but I was glad that I had a go otherwise it would have been gnawing away at me tonight.

On the way home however I saw this rock, found a place to park my car and managed to take this photo. What appeals to me about it is that although it looks huge it is only about 4 metres tall. I also like the cleft in the peak. Of all the photos that I have taken in the 6 weeks that I have been in Central Otago this is one that I like the best.

Autumn Colour

Not only is this area famous for its rock formations but also for its spectacular
autumn colours. As you can see in the top photo, the leaves on these willows are beginning to turn so I do not have long to work with them.

Willows and poplars are the dominant trees here, willows being so dominant
that in some areas they have taken over waterways to such an extent that they
have to be poisoned or cut down. The ones in the bottom photo have been poisoned.

These photos are not necessarily ones that I want to keep, but as I often see with my work, they are congruent. One could easily fit over the other one.

The Great Easter Bunny Shoot

An annual event, this was the scene in a nearby park today. I don't know how
many rabbits there are here but last it year it was approximately 16,000. Here the rabbits are
laid out in groups of 10 ready for easy counting by the judges.

Other pests were allowed as well. In a similar shoot at Mossburn a couple of weeks ago the winners shot 470 hares, 80 rabbits, 8 magpies, 33 possums, a goose, a mouse and a cat.

Today there was one goat. One team in a rush of enthusiam had even added 3 turkeys, which, while I was sorry to see them dead, did provide me with a very nice tail feather as
a souvenir.

Warbirds Over Wanaka

Today I went to the first day of this airshow, held in Wanaka
every two years. It was a chance for me to see aircraft that I have never seen before, and better still, not sitting in a museum but flying.

Below is an Australian Air Force Globemaster, a new aircraft, making a slow low level run with wheels and flaps down, giving us a display of raw power.

Dunstan Mountains

Today I went on a 4 wheel drive trip into the Dunstan Mountains. I can see them from
where I live so I was especially curious to go there. An ordinary family car would not make it, it's rugged country.

I was also very motivated to get there because, as I've written in previous posts, I'm eager to photograph the rocks that this area is famous for.

The first of these two photos I feel, is a bit more like it. There is a certain resonance to it. It gave me a sense of something ancient, even perhaps made by humans. I was reminded of the obelisk in 2001 A Space Odyssey. This 'pressure of the more' and I apologise for using this phrase before, is what I seek in any art work, regardless of the medium. Without it I find work empty.

This second photo is quite interesting. I would like to see it big before I make up my mind.
Unfortunately I don't have a big printer here so that may have to wait.

A Long Way From Home

This Adelie Penguin, looking a little the worse for wear, is in the museum here in Alexandra, not on display, but in a storage cupboard.

Apparently in the early 1930's it was brought back live from Antarctica to Dunedin, on Admiral Byrd's ship Jacob Rupert. It died in Dunedin but after what interval I don't know. I hope that it had a happy time there but I fear not.

I would like to have another attempt at photographing it, something more in the line of a portrait, although the sense of it sheltering in this metal box is interesting as well. Perhaps that idea needs developing.

Cloud du Jour

The Mighty Clutha

I went on a boat trip on the Clutha river this afternoon.
Two minutes into the trip I took this photo.
The lovely house where I live is right behind the new bridge.

Here is a view a little further down the river,
looking back towards Alexandra.

Fruitlands
Fruitlands is the name of the area where I took this photo today. Interesting name for somewhere that looks like this. Almost as puzzling as another nearby locality called Muttontown. Don't think that I would want to live somewhere called Muttontown. I can say this because as far as I know no one lives there and I'm not going to get jumped on when I go for my morning coffee.

As you can see, I'm hot on the trail of rocks at present. I'm still not happy with any photos that I have taken so far but I'm giving myself an A for Effort especially as the giant temperature gauge in town said that it was 36 degrees today.

The photo below is from Butcher's Dam where I was yesterday. I went back today to rephotograph this rock that I had noticed. It's as if I have a built in geiger counter/metal detector that tells me that there is something in front of me that I need to pay attention to even if I don't know why.

Yet when I see this it immediately reminds me of another photo that I
took a couple of weeks ago, the photo below of a cloud.

Perhaps it's the shapes, the spaces, that attract me. In other words,
it's not the 'subject' that's the point, the template is.

Here is another example from ten years ago.

Central Otago Rocks

This region is famous for its rocks and I wouldn't like to leave here without taking at least one photo which does them justice. It may take me the entire 11 months that is remaining but I'll keep searching. The photo above is not mine, but shows the kind of the formations commonly found here. I think that an episode in Lord of the Rings was filmed in Otago.

Today was my first attempt to go out looking for rocks with my camera. I drove about 5 minutes to a place called Butcher's Dam and parked in a DOC carpark before setting off exploring on foot. This photo, below, not very strong but a beginning, was taken at a small lake in which, because of the hot and dry summer, the water level is very low. Normally this rock would be covered.

Gold Fever

Alexandra, where I am living is a town to a large extent built on gold fever.
While early methods of extraction were of relatively low ecological impact, eventually large dredges were built. These dredges sifted through large areas, leaving rocky tailings which are now a feature of much of the land around here, though many on them now hidden by willows and poplars.

The dredge in the photo above was one of the largest and one of the last to operate in the area, not ceasing work until the early 50's. I like the way it looks like something from 'Alien'. The photo is from the Turnbull Library. I wish I'd taken it.

Some of the tailings a few minutes away from where I live are a reserve, they can be seen in the Google Earth image below. The river is the Clutha.

I have been walking over the tailings hoping that somewhere in there is a photograph.
I took several images, an example is below, but so far no luck. I think that I need more
elevation.

Rats

I have rats wanting to share this house with me, I hear the pitter patter of their little feet as they run around in the ceiling in the night. Alan, the caretaker, who handily, lives next door, has been laying poison, one large dose of which is in a kitchen cupboard.
I noticed that over the last few days it has been going down.

Yesterday as I got up and went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea I could hear scrabbling noises coming from the cupboard with the bait. Gingerly I opened the door. There was a rat on its back, with it legs paddling in the air. I slammed the door shut immediately and went for Alan's help.



I did have an idea that there might be a photo in it so before I heaved the carcass over a steep bank in front of this house, I took a took a couple of snaps, but for some reason the head shot is slightly out of focus. The tail one is fine.

I don't feel like going down the bank to retrieve the body so I will let it go.

Likeness & Character

I was in the Auckland CBD yesterday morning and with an hour or two to spare
decided to nip into the Auckland Art Gallery, or the half of it that is open now that the main building is closed indefinitely for alterations.

While in the foyer, one of the security people kindly told me that there were 3 of my photos on display. This was a surprise to me. The exhibition, a collection show called Likeness & Character, is on until April 20th.

I don't do a lot of portraits, this one was made about 3 years ago.

Man is in the Forest

Last night I was in Auckland and able to watch a Japanese children's television programme on NHK. I have no idea
what this programme what about but I was intrugued by the way this deer, Sika in Japanese, had forks for antlers.

(The line, Man is in the Forest, comes from the Bambi film. Bambi was the first movie that I ever remember seeing and it's been on my mind lately because I've been writing some biographical material. In it I describe how it was a raw movie of love, death and loss. I cried when they fled from the forest fire and Bambi's mother was shot by hunters. Man was the enemy, the destroyer.)

The Press

The title of this posting is a link to an interview of me published on Wednesday, in The Press. It is the only daily paper in Christchurch.

The image above was taken near McRaes Flat in Otago, where there is a fence, with runs for a couple of hundred metres, draped with skins. There is a variety, wild goats, pigs, the occasional sheep, and possum. Here is another photo from the scene.




The other famous fence in Otago, near Wanaka, which was draped with bras, is no more. It was becoming such a traffic hazard that they have been removed.

Jigsaw Time

Yesterday I took this photo of reflections. I took several but this is the only one
that I think has something extra. But most of all it gives me the feeling that I would love to see it as a jigsaw. There has only been one other photo that I have ever taken that I have felt this way about and it is the one below. I took it last August in a b & b in Oamaru.

Reflections

There are subjects in photography that are just irresistible, and seem to
have been that way ever since the medium's invention.
Autumnal landscapes with reflections in the water is one, cloud formations another.
The reflections in the water theme is one that I've been brought up with, often on the lid of biscuit tins or chocolate boxes. Calendars were another big source. Metal trays and jigsaws too.

Being such well trodden tracks does make it difficult to say anything original. It's the same way with the human nude. However, that does not mean that its not worth trying even if its just for fun!

These two photos I've taken in the last couple of days, I'm beginning to get out and about with my camera. Taking photos like these is almost like practising your scales, they're warm up exercises.

The cloud photo has come a little closer to being a keeper though. It has something interesting about it, and I don't feel inclined to discard it just yet. I've set it as my screensaver.

The lake in the photo above, about 10 minutes from where I am living, freezes over in winter and is a popular site for ice skating. No doubt I will be revisiting it then, although whether with a pair of skates and in a slinky lycra outfit, I'm not so sure. I don't think that Torvil and Dean have anything to worry about.

More Rabbits

Yesterday I made a posting about the Great Easter Bunny Shoot, a mass hunt of rabbits in the region around Alexandra. As about a third of the visitors to my site are from overseas, I thought in the night that perhaps I might be seen as some sort of psychopathic killer, so here are some facts.

Rabbits, introduced in the 1830's by English settlers, rapidly reached plague proportions, largely because this country had none of their natural enemies such as, for example, the fox, the wolf, or the coyote. They stripped vast swathes of land of its vegetation and erosion on a huge scale was the result.

The problem was compounded in the 1880's when ferrets, weasels, and stoats were introduced to control the rabbits. In Australia foxes were introduced for the same purpose. Unfortunately the mustelids, ie the stoat etc, found native birds very much to their liking. The more the rabbit numbers are reduced, the more the mustelids turn to native birds as a food source.

Various methods of rabbit control have been trialled, such as myxomatosis, and RCD, but the problem is still far from solved, hence the value of these events such as the Easter Bunny Shoots.


Twice I have taken photos of rabbits. Here is one taken in the desert of New Mexico, USA, in about 2000.

The Great Easter Bunny Shoot

I've just had serious news. The Great Easter Bunny Shoot, held here in Alexandra
on Easter Saturday clashes with the Wings over Wanaka airshow! I really wanted to see what thousands of dead rabbits looked like all laid out for counting. Teams of hunters bring the bodies back to a local park. There are prizes.

But Wings over Wanaka is one of the great airshows and only held every two years. Wanaka is about an hour away by car.

The rabbits above are from a diorama in the local museum.

Maurice Till Concert

As I mentioned in my previous posting, last night I went to a Maurice Till concert, here in Alexandra. There were about 50 people there and I had a front row seat. This is a wide angle shot so it does not really show just how close I was to the keyboard. Wide angle settings push the subject back. I was only two or three metres away the piano which was, as often I tinker with the piano here at Henderson House, a great thrill for me.

About a third of the way in, during some Schumann, I did not know whether to feel inspired or to simply give up on my piano study and stick to CD's.

I had my little pocket sized Leica with me and wanted to take a photograph but out of courtesy I didn't want to be too obtrusive. Consequently I waited until the end and without using a flash I quickly grabbed this photo. I regret that the light was so low that the image is rather soft.

If you click on this piece of writing it will come up large enough to read. You will see what an eminent pianist Maurice Till is. Prior to playing his final scheduled piece he spoke most movingly about how he had first played in Alexandra in 1949 as part of the University Trio, who based at Otago University, where making a tour of this part of New Zealand.

His overture was the heartbreaking Schumann's Devotion. As soon as I arrived back at Henderson House, I got back on to the piano here. That was a good sign. For me, not necessarily for the neighbours.

Ready, set.....

I've pretty well got things organised here now. Moving is a big task. Perhaps it
often takes a bit longer than planned. Now I feel ready to move out and explore the surrounding area. I've been here 3 weeks now.

This photo is 3 or 4 years old. Originally the object was a lead sinker, designed for
fishing off wide, sandy beaches that have a lot of waves. A friend painted it up like this. I printed it up as a small little photo, and in an edition.

Tonight I'm going to a piano recital at the local museum. The pianist is Maurice Till, playing amongst other composers, Chopin.

In the morning I am going to buy some detailed maps of the area and start planning some exploration. One option is to take a trip which leaves on a boat from a landing on the Clutha river right below where I live. The boat takes tourist on a trip down the river towards Roxburgh dam.

I've just managed to get broadband set up which is making things a lot easier. And I am getting used to my Apple Mac.

Bad Language

I'm in New Plymouth briefly, tomorrow I return to Central Otago. Yesterday and today I visited the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. For those of my site visitors who do not live in New Zealand this is an art museum which prides itself on being the leading contemporary art gallery in the country.

I have not made any art political postings for almost a year. The last time was when I criticised the quality and cost of Prospect, an exhibition at the City Gallery in Wellington. I was rather intemperate and sparks flew and I was taken off their mailing list.

I admire a paragraph in an Elizabeth Knox novel which says something like 'clarity in language is a form of politeness.' I might not have this quote exactly right but I have the sense of it.

Here is an excerpt from a wall panel at the Govett-Brewster. I do not want to say which artist it is describing, that is irrelevant. This is curatorism. I wish that curators didn't think that they have to write like this.

For this visionary landscape ....... has drawn on the hallucinatory works of sixteenth-century figurative painters Hieronymous Bosch and Pieter Bruegel, countercultural rhetoric, utopian futurism and the fantasies of survivalists, millenarians and social exiles. Combining aspects of the familiar, antique and ultramodern, the figures model the faithfulness of spiritual and alternative lifestyles yet also allude to the futility and compromise inherent to dreams ..... suggests a complex of ideas about time, hope, social and evolutionary change.

More Butterflies

Getting over all the travel turmoil of the last few days and more and more my mind is going back to the collection of butterflies that I saw in Alexandra. That is, the collection put together by a soldier on the Solomons in World War 2. I posted about these a few days ago.



I don't want to be too woowoo but I can't help thinking that there is something extra to these butterflies. If I hadn't known anything about their history would I have felt the 'pressure of the more'. If I showed them to a total stranger and held them up against recently caught specimens would they be able to detect a difference? I'm not sure.

I intend finding out, and will use my camera to test the proposition.

The Stressometer

A thousand apologies to my Christchurch friends. What a day, stranded by the weather at Queenstown airport when I was supposed to be at the Christchurch Art Gallery giving a talk about my work!

On the stressometer level this was way up. I hope that I can make it up to those of you who came but to no avail and I hope that it did not inconvenience you too much and that we will be able to reschedule it.

I feel a little responsible because I know Queenstown's reputation. As soon as I walked into the airport and looked at the arrival and departure screens I was bewildered. This was explained half an hour later when there was an announcement that the screens on show were yesterdays!

Goldmining

This is a town that was built on goldmining. The museum here has
a collection of mining equipment on display.

Tomorrow morning I drive for an hour to Queenstown to the airport there. From there I fly to Christchurch where at 2 pm I give a talk, at the Christchurch Art Gallery, about my recent work.

This is the first time in my thirty year career that I have had so much contact with this gallery. This would not be unusual. Many artists in New Zealand would be in the same position, because as a gallery it has been, to a large extent, frozen over. Fortunately there is
change.