Otago Polytechnic art student Dillon Waddell has created a horse-drawn plough from recycled materials which is turning heads and furrowing brows at the Dunedin School of Art’s annual SITE exhibition.
The 28-year-old said it was made from salvaged metal from the Cadbury factory demolition, rimu wood from old power poles, and ‘‘life-soaked’’ green carpet from his grandmother’s lounge.
‘‘There’s a high likelihood that there’s a bit of Cadbury’s in there.
‘‘I believe we’ve already got materials in this world. We may as well use them rather than constantly remanufacturing them.’’
Mr Waddell said the artwork was inspired by his grandfather Jack Gamble, who passed away in 2018.
‘‘He was a jack-of-all-trades. He was a farmer at one point of his life, he was in the army, he was a firefighter, he was in a band, he was a stock agent, he worked at a grain store ...
‘‘He had managed to collect a lot of objects throughout his life and that was the seed of my artistic journey, looking into the objects and societal remnants that we hold on to — things that we consider to have value and the emotional connections that we have with objects.
‘‘His collection represented everything that he ever did.’’
Mr Waddell said he was able to read the story of his grandfather’s life through his physical possessions, and a continuation of that process prompted him to start looking at the greater picture of New Zealand’s landscape.
‘‘This plough is representative of one of the first ploughs that came to Otago on the Philip Laing.
‘‘It’s a physical remnant of the history of how this land came to be, and our cultures.’’
Mr Waddell stamped his pseudonym on the plough — D Gamble — as a tribute to his grandfather.
He said his next project was likely to be a wool press.
‘‘It’s a bit of a symbolic item, seeing as its point is to crush down and suppress.
‘‘The world’s my oyster at this point. I have a million ideas for things I want to do.’’
The plough is one of many artworks by final-year bachelor of visual arts and postgraduate students, on display at the SITE exhibition at the Dunedin School of Art, which runs for another two days until Monday.
If you fancy buying Mr Waddell’s artwork, you have been beaten by an earlier bird who bought it yesterday.
But there are plenty of other artworks for sale at the exhibition, he said.
