Artist rolls out the recycling barrel
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The McLaren Vale wineries discard their beautiful French oak barrels after a decade or so, making them perfect material for the Aldinga artist.
Turner has re-crafted them into everything from worry beads to mock airplanes and is working on his "yacht".
At the opening of the Fleurieu Bienniale's Water Prize paintings exhibition at Fox Creek winery yesterday, he brought along his latest sculptural installation which comments on the drought.
That featured an old wine barrel fitted with a tap dribbling water into a series of pools, with a half dozen waterbirds carved out of red gum.
"The whole installation title is – let me see – Let Them Drink Wine," he intoned. "If the world's running out of water we had better give 'em wine." Over the years, Fox Creek has been decorated by Turner's artworks fashioned from barrels and found timber, including a "Red Baron" bi-plane. He points to its suspiciously florid propeller fairing: "You put a bottle of shiraz in there and you can be up high in the sky for hours and hours," he says.
When the winery dog Shadow, after which its Shadow's Run wine is named, died recently, Turner created a new work. It is titled Chateau Down Under.
Turner says he has recycled "hundreds and hundreds" of wine barrels and the bigger straight-sided vats.
"These materials are everwhere and it's just a shame to see it trashed," he said.
Yesterday's Water Prize exhibition opening showed many entries were concerned with drought and the dying River Murray.
A $2200 work by leading art curator Jane Hylton, who lives at Clayton on Lake Alexandrina, showed objects revealed by the receding waters of the lake laid out like a museum display. It was sold.
The $90,000 Fleurieu Biennale art prize winners will be announced on Saturday.