Pine Forest - A Permanent Public Sculpture for The Junction
It Is A Contradiction: A Tree Made From Wood.
A shocking 10 percent of materials from every new build goes to landfill, which means they are buried, allowing the treated timber to potentially leach toxic chemicals into New Zealand soil and rivers. With an increasing demand for housing, it is necessary to find practical solutions to minimise the impact of more than 3 million tonnes of discarded construction and demolition debris to landfills each year. It’s more than timely to start conversations around how to deal with the increasing amount of excess waste, and Rose Petterson creates a talking point with her winning sculpture, Pine Forest.
Housing New Zealand Built 1,036 New Homes In 2018, Which Is An Increase From 466 In The Year Prior, And According To Stats NZ, “The Number Of New Dwellings Consented In 2019 Was 37,538, Up 14 Percent From The December 2018 Year.”
Rose Petterson, who won the commission to install her Zero Waste Vision sculpture at The Junction in New Plymouth, is a local artist with a Fine Arts degree from Otago Polytechnic School of Art. Sculpting is her specialty, and she works with a variety of mediums including steel, 3D printed plastic, and recycled materials like soft plastics that would otherwise go to landfill. “My art practice is largely an investigation of the dichotomy of opposites,” she states in her online portfolio, wildRose Design and Film.
The Irony: Once A Pine Forest, Then Logged, Milled And Treated To Be Erected Once Again - Not As A Dwelling, But As A Tree.
Pine Forest consists of nine "totems of timber” made of H3 wood offcuts which have been discarded by local construction sites around Taranaki and collected by Rose. She gives new life to these misfit pieces by fitting them together like an intricate jigsaw puzzle. Each “tree” will be equally spaced apart mimicking the method by which they were originally planted on our New Zealand hillsides. They stand 3.5 meters tall and have taken her more than 200 hours to gather from nearby construction sites and assemble into these sizable once-again-trees.
NPDC Manager Resource Recovery Kimberley Hope says the artwork will be a strong addition to The Junction. “It’s an eye-catching design and it will get people talking about the state of our natural resources and how important it is to reuse the materials we have, instead of creating waste. And that’s the point of The Junction: to get people to see waste as a valuable resource that can be reused, rather than adding it to the rubbish pile.”
The completed sculpture will be erected at The Junction, the community’s new Zero Waste Hub on Colson Rd, for the new centre’s Fun Day on Saturday 21 March. The public opening of The Junction is on Friday 6 March.
The Junction is a Zero Waste hub developed by NPDC and operated by Sustainable Taranaki and WISE Charitable Trust. It will have a drop-off area for recyclable materials, a shop for buying pre-loved items and education workshops.
Educational tours on recycling can be booked for interested groups, organisations, schools, and businesses with a minimum of 10 people and are provided free. Please email tours@sustainabletaranaki.org.nz
