Forged in fire

THE FLOW OF LIFE: 'A household in preparation for a journey!' playwright Lorraine Vivian Hansberry once enthused about packing crates. 'Something full of the flow of life, do you understand? Movement, progress . . .' Except the open-sided crates, and the objects suspended within them, in Conor Jeory's assemblage Cargo, play on the notion of the suspended transport of cargo, of crates, left waiting on the wharf due to shipping compromised by Covid-19. But wait, there's more . . . Picture supplied

Over many decades, birds that fell down a chimney at the Jeory family's former home, Limerick, in Lytton Road, sadly fluttered to death in its boarded-up fireplace.

When the house was demolished last century a workman told Conor Jeory a two-foot pile of bird skeletons was found in the hearth. Jeory rummaged through the unfortunate ossuary and from the bottom of the pile removed two delicate bird skulls that were there before he was born.

One of those skulls features in the blow-torched and oiled cricket cage suspended in one of six open-sided crates that make up Jeory's assembled work, Cargo.

From left to right the frames house a carved orthographic wharenui with a landscape carved into its doorway, a block from a fence post topped with a small, carved, blackened chapel, a molten hatchet-blade dug up from Jeory's backyard, and the cricket cage from Hong Kong with a bird-skull and nest.

Atop the four crates is a much larger crate that houses, in mid-space, an axe composed of an intricately carved, fire-blackened and oiled shaft and Kelly blade.

Atop that crate is a small one that contains a flat block of wood carved in the form of a denuded landscape with a small wharenui among the folds.

The objects are suspended from near invisible mono-filaments within the framework.

“No matter what happens to the box they float in space,” says Jeory.

“Crates are amazing spaces. They create a theatre space, like a proscenium arch.”

Cargo is the most significant work he has created and the delicately wrought axe-handle is the best carving he has ever done, he says.

As the work's title suggests, the stack riffs on the notion of the suspended transport of cargo, of crates left waiting on the wharf, due to shipping compromised by Covid-19. Many of Jeory's sold works end up in countries and cities such as Italy, Chicago and Czechoslovakia but the container ship shortage has compromised that export too and become part of Jeory's Cargo story.

The crate motif continues in works Jeory has selected for his annual exhibition, Object 2021, at Verve Cafe. Among the pieces is an open-sided crate with a taiaha carved from flawed puriri (“I worked with the idea of scarce resources”) and another crate, upright, in which a staff topped with a handle carved from the shaft in the shape of a skull is suspended.

Each of the items in the crates has its own story and there are often cross-over concepts.

In Cargo, the axe with the carved handle is part of Jeory's Alien Weaponry series in which he takes various implements and repurposes them as weapons.

One such item began with another axe-head Jeory fixed to a “super-sized” shaft so it became a kind of taiaha. The concept plays with Old Testament prophet Isaiah's vision that in peacetime people “shall beat their swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks”, says Jeory.

The carved and blackened axe handle that is part of Cargo came from an axe that once belonged to the Gisborne Fire Brigade.

“I got given it one Christmas by my brother,” says Jeory.

“It was broken and wound with green tape. Part of the hickory handle had a flaw in it so it was constantly repaired with twine and tape.”

The eye of the axe head had also been through the wars. It was blackened and burned out from years of firefighting. He replaced the original axe head with a Kelly axe blade. The Kelly was manufactured by American Fork and Hoe Company which later changed its name to True Temper.

“I found it in Barwicks,” says Jeory.

“It has been beaten up, forged in fire.”

Jeory also carved the shaft so finely the axe is now too fragile for firefighting.

“If used in a fire it will fail. It's designed to fail,” he says.

“I also used a Japanese technique called shou sugi ban in which you char the wood in oil to preserve it.”

He applied the same technique to the tiny chapel atop the fence post block.

Much found material features in Jeory's works — including the crates he picked up from the side of the road.

“For years I made my living trawling the beach in winter for totara and puriri. It's free, native timber and has a patina. Forests were chopped down and made into base things like fence posts.”

Heavy weather and land slippage throws some of them into the sea and they are washed ashore. Lahars of slash have possibly blocked that resource.

“I go to the beach now and it's only slash.”