My husband Hamish Coney and I named this site Maunga KererΕ« soon after we moved here in 2010. In 2008, I followed my nose to find a new place to be. AΒ for sale sign, almost submerged in long grass, caught my eye as I drove down this peninsula in Mahurangi, north east of Auckland. Once I was standing on the land I knew in my bones this is where I would live. Hamish fell in love with it after walking through the bush and coming across a pΕ«keko flying awkwardly out of a kΔnuka tree.
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It was a paddock with a bog and some incredible matriarch pΕ«riri and pΕhutukawa trees. I was doing my Master of Fine Arts at Elam at the time and Hamish had just founded Art & Object, the art auction house. As research, I began a permaculture-design certificate and it was during this time that I designed the gardenβs basic layout, which weβve followed ever since.
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I began testing out biodynamics on the compost piles Iβd been making to restore soil on the compacted clay driveway, which became the edible area. The results were amazing and I just kept going. I soon discovered the artists I was increasingly interested in were also interested in Rudolf Steiner, who developed biodynamics. Things quickly began to coalesce as one research enquiry. Now I think of everything β life, art and growing β through the lens of thermodynamic principles: entropy (death-affirming impulse) and syntropy (life-affirming impulse), and the forms that arise between them as life comes into and flows out of being.
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My life evolved in a way that made learning how to heal a focus. Once I had attended to my own safety mask, I turned to face the world and what I saw bothered me. After doing a series of paintings called Painting Rubbish β portraits of rubbish on the roads in Delhi β the feeling in me became urgent, and I set out to find a piece of land to practice healing the earth.Β
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Hamish and I oversee different parts of the garden. I look after the edible area and he looks after the native plantings. Now that the studio is complete, Hamishβs plantings have really come into their own.
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It is tremendously centring to have the studio and garden in the same space, one influencing the other and informing the work that emerges from within.
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The first artistβs studio I ever visited was Claude Monetβs when I was in my early twenties. It made a huge impression on me. His garden in Giverny was created near the completion of WWI and was, in many ways, his attempt of healing in a time of trauma. My garden is a reflection of our time of trauma, one where environmental fluctuations and biodiversity decimation are spiralling out of control.
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Life in all its forms are wonder-full. I have dedicated my life to coming to know this as deeply as possible, using my energy to give expression to ever-increasing forms of life. In the garden, this results in more food than we can possibly eat and an abundance of biodiversity.
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In the studio, it results in new and surprising discoveries, and in life it occurs as a feeling of purpose, seeing beauty in whatβs there and sensing an ever-expanding feeling of peace.
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