... At Sydney Contemporary

We are excited to be the official wine partner of Sydney Contemporary. We love how art challenges us to think about the times in which we live.

As a winery, increasing sustainable practices across our six vineyards is our top priority.  We are finding ways to decrease our footprint across land, water and sky. Look for our pop-up bar during Sydney Contemporary, it’s made from 100% recycled cardboard wine boxes and features a curated list of high quality wines and cheese.

We caught up with creatives Annie and Taja from the Handpicked team to find out more about their quest to build the ultimate cardboard fort.

The minds behind the project: meet Annie, our brand manager 

• You are building an installation out of cardboard wine boxes… why? How did this all begin?

 Well, we had some leftover wine boxes which couldn’t be used for shipping wine. We thought, it would be a real shame to throw these out.

 As a team, we’re pretty passionate about minimising waste and so we got down to thinking about other ways we could re-purpose the boxes to make something meaningful.  What you need to know about these boxes, is they are incredibly sturdy (wine is a fragile product, after all). And it just so happened that we had a couple big events and installations coming up in the calendar…

•  Can you walk us through the creative process of coming up with ideas like this?

 I find that the best creative ideas often come from being pushed to think outside the box. We’re very lucky that at Handpicked, this is something that happens quite a lot!

 In any case, often the first step is looking for inspiration from the world around us and figuring out the story we want to tell. How we tell it, comes down to just giving it a go; experimenting, seeing what people respond to and building it up from there.

For this project, we built a mini cardboard box installation for Melbourne Film Festival as a trial. People loved the concept and this gave us the confidence to go even bigger for Sydney Contemporary. We are also working on an evolution of this concept for Prowine Shanghai which will be unveiled later this year.

• How does this installation reflect the Handpicked Wines philosophy?

Handpicked is about making wine accessible. We want to create a fun environment where people can enjoy the wine and learn a bit more about it, in the process. Behind the scenes, we are also finding small ways to ‘tread lightly’ and build with a conscience. It’s bringing massive change across our vineyards and trickling through to everything that we do.

When it comes to pop up events, you’ll see incredible displays which get built for a day and then put straight into the bin afterwards. By building with existing materials and exploring ways to re-use it after the event, we hope to reduce this impact, even if it’s only in a small way.

We are still building that fun environment for people to enjoy a glass of wine – but in a more sustainable way.

And Taja, our graphic designer/ fort apprentice

• You did a rehearsal of the wall that will be at Sydney Contemporary in a warehouse. What was the most significant learning from that day?

How important it is to test build and weed out any issues you may run into on bump in day. IMAGINE DA STRESS. And also, I shouldn’t eat burgers while wearing that crop top.

• What do you love about your job? 

 The people I work with - Big brains, big hearts, big D’s (dreams)

•  Where can you see this recycled art bar?  

Carriageworks Bay 17 BAY-B!

Sydney contemporary 2019

The Fair will be open to visitors from 12-15 September 2019 with the Opening Night taking place on Thursday 12 September at Carriageworks.
As a follower of Handpicked Wines, Sydney Contemporary is delighted to offer you 20% off tickets! - To purchase tickets click here. Sydney Contemporary opening hours are:

• Thursday 12 September, 12noon - 5pm

• Friday 13 September, 12noon - 8pm

• Saturday 14 September, 11am - 6pm

• Sunday 15 September, 11am - 6pm