In Recloaking, ZAWAA 2024 Premier Award winner Marie Porter brings a sculptural consideration to the considerable undertaking of harvesting pine trees, ultimately intending to recloak 6.7 hectares of steep, rocky land in what will once again in time become mature native forest.

On Te Pātaka o Rākaihautū Banks Peninsula, on this tract of land that Porter cares for, there are few remnants of the original podocarp forest that once covered it. Post-settlement industry of Milling, burn offs and coverage of the hills and valleys in grass and livestock has wholly changed the environment of this area.

Pinus Radiata –  the Monterey Pine, is more commonly known in Aotearoa New Zealand as the Radiata. It was introduced into the country in the late 1850s to assess its suitability for commercial forestry as a viable replacement for logging dwindling native forest. The tree’s rapid growth, ability to thrive in a variety of conditions, and the versatility of its timber led to its widespread establishment during the planting boom of the 1920s and 30s. Subsequent research into silviculture and genetic improvements, and subsidies for forest establishment in the 70s, has meant that some ninety percent of this country’s plantation forest consists of Radiata.

In the gallery, Porter houses a series of three sculptural forms within an atmosphere that suggests verdant native forest. Two of these, each a metre cubed, utilises the detritus of the pine harvesting process (‘slash’), and can be imagined as units of time, space and volume – all essential considerations in pine forestry.

For Porter, they represent a coming-to-terms of the changes wrought upon the land and the responsibility towards it that now rests on the artist. These accumulations of material into minimalist forms provide a way of apprehending a forest on a human scale. Condensed and rationalised, they substantiate the pine forest not as an abstract that covers n hectares, harvested by n volume, but as something with a relation to the land and subject to cause and effect – both beneficial and detrimental.

The third cube, a stand of the native white pine Kahikatea serves as an aspiration that biodiverse native forest will again cloak the denuded whenua. Porter is encouraged by forerunners whose efforts attest to the fruits that manaakitanga and time can yield: Botanist and conservationist Hugh Wilson, who established Hinewai Reserve in 1987 – over 1600 hectares of native forest on the south-eastern corner of the peninsula; The gift of around 300 hectares of farmland on the southern coast, where the local rūnanga Waiwera will replant native trees over a 35 year period. Eventually, on the land under Porter’s care, it is hoped old growth forest will sustain a once-vanished ecosystem on another small part of the Peninsula.

Marie Porter is an Ōtautahi Christchurch-based interdisciplinary artist (painter, sculptor, and writer) and a recent recipient of the Zonta Ashburton Women’s Art Award (ZAWAA) in 2024. Her current research examines the Horomaka Banks Peninsula hilltop environment where she spends time working and playing, focussing on responding to environmental impacts and the recloaking of this whenua. Marie holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours from the Ilam School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury.

Images courtesy of the artist