Cow pat art could cost you thousands
Is it art? Or just a pile of old … dung?
Visitors to a new exhibition, featuring an array of artistically adapted cow pats, may pose the question as they peer at the bovine excrement offerings, complete with heady price tags.
The We Did All These Landscapes exhibition, at the historic Stoddart Cottage in Diamond Harbour, is the work of internationally renowned contemporary jewellers Karl Fritsch and Lisa Walker, in collaboration with Banks Peninsula artist Brenda Nightingale.
Encompassing dozens of cow patbased creations, together with jewellery, painting, ceramics and woodwork, one dung-themed piece has already sold to Wellington-based collectors for $800.
Another work, Cow Pat 39 – a painting featuring dung material with acrylic paint and varnish – is available for $2800.
The exhibition is the result of Fritsch and Walker’s time as artists-in-residence for the venue, drawing inspiration from the paddocks surrounding the Purau cottage they lived in during their tenure earlier this year.
Fritsch, whose work is shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, together with Te Papa in Wellington, is well known for his playful and unconventional approach.
He told The Press that the sheep, cows and cow pats of Banks Peninsula became a muse during his time in Diamond Harbour – and also reminded him of home.
“I grew up in the mountains in Germany, in the deep south, Bavaria. And I grew up with that view, you know, the animals and the cow pats, and it was just across the fence [in Purau].
“And it just struck my eye, and you know, pulled all these memories, and then I just started to collect them. And, you know, it’s just grass that has just been actually through a cow.”
Stoddart Cottage Gallery manager Jo Burzynska said Nightingale convinced fellow artists Fritsch and his partner Walker – a pioneer of contemporary jewellery in New Zealand – to take on the residency in Diamond Harbour.
“We were very excited that they were interested, because obviously they’ve got an international reputation. So it was a great thing for us to have them in little Diamond Harbour and interacting with the environment around the gallery.”
The three artists collaborated on most of the pieces. Fritsch sourced the cow pats, mixing some with materials such as graphite, before handing them over to Walker and Nightingale for further work.
Fritsch acknowledged the light-hearted side to the exhibition, but stressed that even cow pat-based art was a serious business.
“There’s certainly humour, but I don’t see it as a joke, it’s just like things I explore.
“In regards to a cow pat, it might be a bit more on the provocative, or more of the ‘making fun’ level, but for me it’s the same as gold or precious stone. It’s a material, it’s neutral for me.”
“It’s piqued people's interest,” Burzynska adds, “and it’s open to lots of different interpretations – as the best art is.”
The Press’s art expert, Warren Feeney, said the exhibition challenged assumptions about the “beauty” of the local landscape, which he described as “a subject as celebrated as it is taken apart within the context of their exhibition”.
“I really like Karl Fritsch and Lisa Walker’s practices,” he adds, “especially the way in which they make the most refined and beautiful works in colour and form, and also their visually rowdy installations and assemblage of objects.”
The exhibition isn’t the first manure-based art to be created in New Zealand. In 2009, Canterbury artist and water activist Sam Mahon unveiled a sculpture of then-Environment Minister Nick Smith made out of cow dung. Meanwhile, German artist Werner Härtl is known for using diluted cow dung to create his sepia-style paintings.
We Did All These Landscapes is open on Friday afternoons, Saturdays and Sundays until the end of May.