Tag Archives: jo voigt

Sculptor ships a message

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RECYCLING: Beechworth sculptor Jo Voigt is seeking more PET bottles to complete her ‘Liquid gold’ installation for Beechworth Arts Council’s Golden Art Fair which opens on Easter Saturday. Photo: Jamie Kronborg

BEECHWORTH sculptor Jo Voigt is chasing contributions of clean, recyclable plastic drink bottles for a major installation she’s creating for next week’s Golden Horseshoes Festival’s Golden Art Fair.

Jo is using the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles and chicken-wire netting to build a large art piece called ‘Liquid gold’. It will feature at the entrance to the fair in Beechworth Soldiers’ Memorial Hall which is expected to be a major drawcard from March 31 to April 2 during the town’s Golden Horseshoes’ Easter festival.

Jo said the work would point to the high intrinsic cost and environmental costs of bottled water, which has been at the heart of a contentious campaign in the Stanley community in the past four years.

The community has wanted to protect its groundwater for productive agricultural use but late last year the Victorian Appeal Court rejected its bid to have a decision by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal that allowed water to be taken for bottling overturned.

Jo said the installation also tapped bottles’ centuries-old use as a means by which someone in distress could launch a message of help or rescue.

Golden Art Fair will feature smaller works by Jo and other North East artists will also participate, including spinner and weaver Rose Gardner, Beechworth printmaker Chris Dormer, Goulburn and North East Arts Alliance members Jacquie Coupe, Isobelle Sirianni, Kathy Whelan and Maggie Hollins, artist and illustrator H. Fish, painters Inga Hanover, Tania Sutton and Kay Hampton, photographers Pamela Thomas and Holly Borschman, basket-maker Jan Clements and quilter Maureen Cooper.

The fair will be open daily between 10am and 4pm. Bottles can be left in wheelie bins near Splatoons’ cartoon shop in Beechworth’s High Street.

See http://www.beechworthgoldenhorseshoes.com.au/program for more information.

Young photographer fronts Golden Art Fair

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TALENTED: Holly Borschman (front) with Beechworth Secondary College fellow 2017 VCE art students Indigo Rowe and Elvie Rooney and art teacher Nina Machielse Hunt within a montage of Holly’s VCE photographic entries. Photo: Jamie Kronborg

AN emerging Beechworth photographer and a frontier installation sculptor are among North East artists and crafters who will demonstrate arts practice and show works at Beechworth Arts Council’s inaugural ‘Golden Art Fair’ during Easter.

VCE 2017 graduate Holly Borschman and established sculptor Jo Voigt are two among 12 who have been invited to show representative works from their portfolios during the town’s annual Golden Horseshoes Festival.

They will be joined by Goulburn and North East Arts Alliance members Kathy Whelan, Jacquie Coupe, Isobelle Sirianni and Maggie Hollins, Beechworth printmaker Chris Dormer, spinner and weaver Rose Gardner, artist and illustrator H. Fish, and painters Inga Hanover and Kay Hampton at the three-day fair in Beechworth Soldiers’ Memorial Hall.

Quilter Maureen Cooper, painter Tania Sutton, photographer Pamela Thomas and basket-maker Jan Clements complete the line-up.

Jo will also use hundreds of recyclable polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles to create a major installation through which people will walk to enter the fair.

It is to be called ‘Liquid gold’ and will interpret the high intrinsic and environmental costs of bottled water, which often retails well above the pump price of petrol, yet is an elemental compound almost freely available from a tap and vital for life, farming and food. The fair will be open March 31-April 2 between 10am and 4pm.

Golden Horseshoes celebrates Ovens goldfield miners’ hard-won right to elect their first Victorian parliamentary representative in 1855 and is Beechworth’s major festival of the year.

It attracts up to 20,000 people for numerous events in the town’s historic heart, including a grand parade on Ford Street on Easter Saturday afternoon.

See http://www.beechworthgoldenhorseshoes.com.au/program or beechworthartscouncil.org.au for more information.