A piece of grandeur

Made for the exhibition, "Keep Kauri Standing | Kia Toitu He Kauri" curated by Dawn Harris. The New Zealand native tree, the Kauri (Agathis australis) is under threat of extinction due to new 2008 species of kauri dieback or kauri collar rot (a water mould that kills these trees) in April 2008 in a number of forests.

Kauri wood is very fine and there are few knots in the wood making it a tree favoured for milling when Aotearoa New Zealand was colonized. " 90 per cent of the area of kauri forest standing before 1000 AD was destroyed by about 1900." The Kauri grows very slowly, about 2 millimetres per year, and they can live longer than 600 years and reach 40 to 50 metres, creating a unique ecosystem underneath their canopy.

Standing in a Kauri forest creates a sense of awe - of grandeur. I wanted to

I had been given a few blocks of kauri by a woodturner friend and decided to use one of these as a holder for the watercolour and text that