Tōtara Uho | by Conor Jeory

This stunning work was hand-carved from a tōtara fence post, with a carved face revealed by Conor Jeory - Ngāti Porou.

Conor was born 1969 in Tairāwhiti (Gisborne). Conor is a multidisciplinary artist who often works with a mix of found materials and reclaimed native woods.
"For years I have taken old fenceposts washed down out of the eroding hinterland of Turanganui-A-Kiwa - Poverty Bay and carved faces into them which I often tattoo with pyrography, a moko of my own design and kaupapa.
Creating Tōtara Uho I wondered what would happen if I tried drilling down Into the post rather than peeling the wood away - to expose a character. This way keeping the form of the post in the round and revealing a sprite within the ancient tree shard. This retains more completely the 'synaesthetic' experience the dry old utilitarian surface of the post expresses. My imagination allows me to place myself on a station with the smell of lanolin and sheep poo, the baa and low of sheep and cattle, the tweeting of the birds, the gentle breeze in the hot sun and the fence lines tracking around the landscape, around the hills and dangling over steep slips in the bare exposed hillcountry".  

Materials: tōtara fencepost

Made in New Zealand
*Please note we do not ship this product outside of New Zealand