Conor Jeory
Gisborne

Hou Moana Whenua
New Sea Land
Ko Marotiri te maunga
Ko Maungahauini te awa
Ko Te Ariuru te Marae
Ko Te Whanau a Te Aotawarirangi te hapu
Ko Horouta te waka
Ko Ngati Porou te iwi

Making artworks from media as varied as plant fibres, stone, bone, wood, music, clay, language, plastics, found objects, to name some, has enabled artist Conor Jeory to pursue and explore a large and growing range of artistic expressions: jewellery, theatre, design, craft-works, painting, journalism, sculpture, music writing, recording and performance, ephemeral outdoor works, poetry, and on. "I find it difficult to identify with the self-taught artist label because so many artists have, and continue to, teach me what they know and I continually practice, practice, practice. I feel I live the life of a perpetual student in an ongoing art school of my own experience". Currently utilising the disciplines of wood-carving and ta moko (tattoo) Conor is bringing over a decades worth of art-making and activism linked with the "practical passion" of combing the environment for materials. The materials he finds and uses are largely the native trees that have been converted into fencing materials to keep previously forested land in pasture. Subsequent erosion has borne these exposed hills into the rivers and on to the ocean, bearing their cargo of the timbers indelibly marked by their lives in the service of "the farm". "I am playing with the activities around environmentalism, bi-cultural politicking(sic), green politics, traditional and contemporary farming practices, the myths and subservient truths around the 'clean greenness' we evoke and rely on, and the historical and ongoing degradation of the flora, fauna and landscape of these islands". Born into the turbulent and effervescent New Zealand of the 70's and 80's to a Maori mother and a 'ten pound Pom' father from Tokomaru Bay, East Coast, and Liverpool, U.K respectively, as no. 8 of 9 in a sprawling Catholic family in Gisborne, 1969, Conor was bathed in exploration, tribal politics and a creative maelstrom that partly describes his Jeory family. Music, play-acting, religious ritual, and adventure all played their parts on a life into and around the arts. "A pivotal time for me was the advent of the Flying Moas art collective when I was in my teens. They ran a gallery in Treble Court and it took hold in me that real artists and real art took place here; that art was not out of touch for me and that it was fun and life, doom and death, fear, fantasy, joy and loathing; the whole caboodle. That anything was in bounds for art to address and explore, evoke and illuminate".

Works available at the Tairawhiti Museum and Kura Galleries in both Auckland and Wellington.
Go to Conors website www.geocities.com/hiconorjoe
Conor's music can be viewed and heard at junkrockrecords.co.nz