Water takes its own course with gravity its driver and we are at its mercy
“I remember as a child coming into the kitchen after dinner, it was full of cigarette smoke and busting through the haze, a Planet Lamp with a 60 watt bulb spread its light onto the table surface when busting through the door, racing from the bathroom tub, my father carrying a large sheet of wet cartridge paper and gently laying it onto the table top.
“He then paused for a short while, maybe taking a few puffs on the Philip Morris plain (non-filtered) tube of tobacco, unhooked it from his lip and rested it on the glass retro Danish ashtray, and reached for a damp sponge which he dipped into some ink black black ink, then began to drag it around on the wet surface of the paper.
“It was wonderful, the ink ran and spread softly with the corpuscles of water finding pathways that only the paper knew about and then, he’d step back and halfsquint at the effect, dab some more, push a little here, adjust a rivulet there and then set back to admire the event – how wonderful! a face had appeared on the paper, a very very strange face.”
“What you don’t put in sometimes is the best part”
There were many nights that his Wash series took over the household, patience with domestic chores and creative license blended in harmoniously and in the end, a wonderful series of images appeared to the delight of everyone.
“You see that face? the ink that made it is the blood of its existence”
“The thing that makes me excited with this process is the element of the unexpected, the way it makes you think quickly and spontaneously, to know when enough is enough.”
Viktoras uses water like it is a colour in itself, leaving areas clear and maybe allowing a little interaction from the blackness.
The Wash Series now an Art Series adorning the Adelé range of wines from Galli Estate
When it comes to making wine, there are wines and there are great wines and each winery will have its favourites. Such is the case with the Adelé range from Galli Estate Winery.
With its headquarters in Sunbury, just a short distance from the Melbourne CBD, Galli grows its own grapes locally as well as in Heathcote, where the region is synonymous with excellent red grape growing. The head winemaker, Ben Ranken, has resoundly been awarded with trophies and prizes for his innovative wines. He has taken some difficult grape varieties and made them into delicious drops: Fiano, Syrah, Tempranillo, Pinot Grigio, to name but a few of the specialty varieties he has had success with.
For such uniqueness (and limited stock availability), the wines do come at a premium price. And premium wines require special labels.
They decided on an “Art Series” for the release of their Premium Range of Adelé wines.
Galli Estate fell in love with Viktoras’ Wash Series and it was decided to incorporate the artwork as simply as possible onto the labels of the range. This ensured that the artwork would remain as such and not just a commercial attachment, showing the label as art as well as the wine as art.
The success has been outstanding. People love the bottles when they order them at the restaurants who stock the range and they are becoming rarer to find on bottleshop shelves.
We trust that Viktoras would be extremely satisfied with the result as well.
If you love wine, give these a try, they are truly wonderful elixirs.
