14 Wairarapa Midweek Extra Wednesday, December 8, 2021 ARATOI VOICES
Extra
Autumn colour patterns inspiring A visit to Kaitoke Regional Park one day in May resulted in Esther Bunning’s evocative exhibition Phosphene, she told the audience at her artist talk at Aratoi. There she unexpectedly came across a tree in autumn colour reflected in the water of a pond and was caught up in capturing it. “I was photographing the reflection, not the surface of the water,” she said. “A little wind stirred it up and the reflections rapidly changed to create new mosaics and patterns.” Her images were taken only minutes or even seconds apart, and every one was different, as the works in the exhibition show. On leaving school, Bunning studied textile design for three years at the Wellington Polytechnic School of Design. Photography was one of the subjects of the course and she was drawn to it. She is not primarily a landscape photographer, having been a portrait
Esther Bunning during her talk.
photographer for around 35 years, working creatively and experimenting with processes, techniques, and mood, often ethereal. Her work has led to many awards, including the final selection for the Parkin Drawing Prize 2021 and the Nikon Iris Professional Photography Award and NZ Photographer of the Year title for 2020. Many will recall her work as ANZAC Bridge Fellow for
PHOTO/TERRY WREFORD HANN
NZ Pacific Studio, when her flags, depicting the Mounted Rifles and World War I horses, flew at the bridge and in Wairarapa towns during the 2021 ANZAC commemorations. Subsequently, she donated the main flag to the collection of Aratoi. It is not surprising then, that the photographs taken that autumn day morphed into something new and extraordinary.
A CLIMATE FOR CHANGE
Eyeing a more humane way of living Anne Nelson It is estimated that every year, humans on this planet eat more than 50 billion chickens, 1.5 billion pigs, 500 million sheep, 400 million goats and 300 million cows. In 2019, we consumed 852 million tonnes of dairy. In 2018, we consumed 179 million tonnes of fish. We have come to think of animals as a commodity. We farm and harvest them on a massive, industrial scale. In Aotearoa, about two million young ‘bobby’ calves are killed every season. Dairy cows, artificially inseminated, are pregnant for much of their lives and bred specifically to be heavy milk producers. Their natural lifespan is about 20 years, but they are culled as young as four-
and-a-half years. Nitrate runoff from dairy farms causes serious pollution in waterways and contaminates drinking water. In dry areas, summer irrigation requires massive quantities of water. But oversight of this resource has been lax and creeks, rivers and aquifers can dry up or run periously low. In wet regions, restricted winter grazing can result in cows standing and birthing in deep mud, while high rain events can result in pollution of waterways by runoff. There is a similar story for almost every species we use as a food source: profit over animal welfare and environment. Chicken is cheap in Aotearoa because of the high-volume, intensive nature of the mainstream
poultry industry. Fastgrowing varieties are favoured, which go from hatching to slaughter in just four to six weeks. Because they grow so fast their legs can be too weak to hold up their bodies, and on some farms thousands of chickens are housed in huge, dark barns. In many of the world’s oceans, industrial fishing methods and an exploitative mindset have damaged ecosystems and caused fish stocks to reach critical levels or collapse. Sea birds and mammals die as bycatch while plastic waste, including massive abandoned ‘ghost nets’, traps and kills thousands of marine creatures every year. In Aotearoa, a small number of corporate quota holders have got rich while
CHEAP CHIPS! Having a registered chip makes it simple to get your dog back to you if they somehow go wandering. If we find it, we find its home fast. Our next discount microchipping event will be on:
THURSDAY 9 DECEMBER, 5-6PM Henley Lake - southern end of the lake near the Colombo Road carpark. Chipping for dogs will be available for a discounted price of $10, including the cost of the chip. We can also check existing chips in dogs and whether or not they have been chipped. Cash only. All dogs on a leash and under active control please. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, social distancing and masks will be required but not Vaccine Passes. WWW.MSTN.GOVT.NZ @MastertonDC
The changing shapes were significant to Bunning, who saw them as representative of “how our vision of life can change instantly” and she set about presenting them as she had in her ANZAC Bridge flag sequence, on fabric. She then rephotographed and printed the images to give “another sense of the unravelling of that landscape” so that complementing the larger
original photographs are two series of smaller images, Stitch Stories and Unravel. The latter is composed of irregularly shaped images which with softer edges, Bunning said, “capture the natural organic process and are not uniform and rigid”. Bunning came across the word Phosphene by chance after the photos were taken, but it certainly fits the exhibition. Phosphenes are the bursts of random and colourful lights we see when we close our eyes and press them with our fingers. On the morning of the artist’s talk, silk fabrics in the exhibition stirred in the breeze from the open door, and you could easily feel what Bunning calls “an organic sense of movement and energy” and be entranced by the shimmering colours and shapes. • Esther Bunning: Phosphene – A portrait of a landscape is on at Aratoi until February 7.
smaller fishers have struggled. And weak government intervention has enabled catastrophic overfishing of some species and the continuation of unethical practices, such as the dumping of less profitable species when more lucrative fish are caught. I’m sure that for many of you, none of this is news. And no doubt you’re also aware that nearly half of Aotearoa’s greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture. The main source is methane, which is many times more potent
In Aotearoa, more than two billion young ‘bobby’ calves are killed every season. PHOTO/SUPPLIED
than CO2. The next highest source is nitrous oxide, from cow wee and nitrogen fertilisers, which is 300 times as potent as CO2. We need to change our mindset about animals and the way we farm them. We do not have the right to breed, raise, and kill animals on this industrial scale and in conditions that can be so astonishingly cruel. And while massive systemic change is needed within these industries, as individuals we do have the choice to move away from our high dependence on animal products and adopt plant-based diets that are less destructive and more humane.
