Author: Peter Peryer

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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.


Sunrise over Alexandra

This was the view from my balcony yesterday morning.
It only lasted a few minutes but it did remind me of how
lucky I am to be living in such a striking landscape.

Last week there was a dusting of snow on these hills.


Butterfly

Today I was in the storage department of a little museum here in Alexandra, Central Otago, called ‘Central Stories’. The director is an entomologist
so the butterfly collection is strong.


Here are some Red Admirals, in Maori, Kahu Kura meaning red cloak.

The butterflies in the top photo are White Butterlies, commonly called Cabbage Whites because of their predilection for eating cabbages. They were acccidentally introduced into New Zealand about 1930.


Most moving of all were these specimens collected by a soldier fighting in the Solomon Islands in World War Two, still, through careful storage, in remarkably good condition.
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