Dividing barriers, crystallizing ponds
Wayne Barrar, Artist; Photographer;
See full detailsObject Detail
About the Work
Part
of
a
collection
of
works
from
the
series
"Saltworks:
The
processed
landscape"
which
was
exhibited
and
toured
in
1989.
These
images
were
taken
at
the
Lake
Grassmere
Saltworks,
which
is
situated
34km
south
east
of
Blenheim.
The
artist
has
maintained
a
keen
interest
in
landscapes
altered
by
human
intervention
through
industry
and
the
commercialisation
of
the
land.
In the catalogue from this exhibition Joanna Paul writes of his work in her essay' A Human Ecology': " In pursuit of intelligibility, Wayne Barrars very formal photographs attain great beauty, in their refusal to interpret or judge they acquire presence. Dispassion might be called cold. There is no personal narrative in his chronology of process, But to my mind the photographs generally and those of the saltworks in particular have a brilliance and a life quickened by their singular embodiment of a vision of landscape...Salt itself is interestingly both natural and inorganic. Colour in the white landscape might be read as heraldic (Loading truck (harvest) 1988); stockpiled spare parts are as orderly in their field of flowers as the deserted battlefield of Robert Bression's 'Lancelot du lac'. A marginal reading might link the crystallization of salt with alchemical transformation, a residue of the narrative - not something teased out by the artist. The shift into colour from graphic teacherly black and white is no indulgence. Colour is a statement of the salt-making process. Blu registers winter and water depth. Red - salinity, summer, krill, evaporation. The photographs trace the two -year cycle of salt crystallization - camera assiduously patiently set up (to avoid constant winds) in he stillness of dawn or evening light. Painstaking preparation, stalking of subject, tiresome journeys transformed into soignée images. Cibachrome does not impart extra gloss but it a logical medium for the mirror-still surfaces of sea and sky, for colour itself quasi-"artificial". "
In the catalogue from this exhibition Joanna Paul writes of his work in her essay' A Human Ecology': " In pursuit of intelligibility, Wayne Barrars very formal photographs attain great beauty, in their refusal to interpret or judge they acquire presence. Dispassion might be called cold. There is no personal narrative in his chronology of process, But to my mind the photographs generally and those of the saltworks in particular have a brilliance and a life quickened by their singular embodiment of a vision of landscape...Salt itself is interestingly both natural and inorganic. Colour in the white landscape might be read as heraldic (Loading truck (harvest) 1988); stockpiled spare parts are as orderly in their field of flowers as the deserted battlefield of Robert Bression's 'Lancelot du lac'. A marginal reading might link the crystallization of salt with alchemical transformation, a residue of the narrative - not something teased out by the artist. The shift into colour from graphic teacherly black and white is no indulgence. Colour is a statement of the salt-making process. Blu registers winter and water depth. Red - salinity, summer, krill, evaporation. The photographs trace the two -year cycle of salt crystallization - camera assiduously patiently set up (to avoid constant winds) in he stillness of dawn or evening light. Painstaking preparation, stalking of subject, tiresome journeys transformed into soignée images. Cibachrome does not impart extra gloss but it a logical medium for the mirror-still surfaces of sea and sky, for colour itself quasi-"artificial". "
Measurements
Image 270 x 355 mm
Media
Cibachrome print
Description
Colour image of a body of water,with land on the horizon and a dividing wall at the centre of the water. Image is extremely still
Credit Line
Collection of the Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui. Purchased, 1989.
Collection Type
Permanent collection
Acquisition Date
1989