The sculpture

Dionysus is a specially commissioned sculpture for Tourism Australia's Corroboree international convention held at the Hunter Valley Crowne Plaza. This 240 cm (8 feet) tall mixed-media artwork created by visual artist, Stephen James.

The artwork consists of a berry-shaped wicker form, woven from local Shiraz vine canes mounted above a highly polished hand-crafted Australian hardwood base. In a sealed glass vessel, suspended within the wicker, is a measure of Hunter Semillon ('the Hunter's gift to the world'). A 2006 vintage produced at local vineyard, its identity known only to the artist.

The myth

Dionysus was the Greek god of the vine. He was attributed with inventing wine and traveling far and wide spreading the art of tending grapes. For the Greeks, he was one of the most important gods in everyday life, representing the yearly cycle of nature. A central theme linked to Dionysus was and remains 'rebirth after death'. According to myth, on Hera's orders he was dismemberment by the Titans and thereafter returned to life. This is symbolically echoed in the tending of the vines, where the vine-canes must be pruned back sharply in winter, and then become dormant so that they may bear fruit in the following season.

The symbolism

The symbolism of the sculpture represents on one level, the vine itself. The apparently dead, wizen vine-canes drained of their creative force are rapt around the almost concealed wine. The wine is both the achievement of the last season, and the potential of the next.

The warm earthy hues of the base represent the earth from which the vine rises, extracting the essence of this particular place. On another level, it is the nature of wine expressed. The wild gnarly vines bent to culture (the wicker) and then worked into a fine crafted, polished human creation (the distinctive hardwood base.)This is such a poetic metaphor for the art of winemaking.

Even the wedged and guttered surface of the base is symbolic of the wine press which extracts the juice. The fine, joined body of the base symbolizes the vessel which holds the wine. It has another private resonance for me, in the wicker and stone-ware "jimmy-john' from which my beloved departed grand parents, Tim and Ruth Goldman poured their nightly small glass of sherry.