Ratanui

Ratanui

Looking beyond commercial ventures like ‘100% Pure New Zealand’ aimed at selling Aotearoa’s supposed purity to tourists, Peter Peryer has had a long fascination with the underbelly of our landscape. Rather than depict its beauty, he shows us visceral textures and contrary compositions to explore what makes it alive.

This photograph was taken in Tarapuruhi, just outside of Whanganui, of Rātānui, a tree that is around 1000 years old and one of the biggest examples of its species. While the vast majority of photographs taken of this tree emphasise its sheer size, Peryer captured this image at a straight angle, shooting only what he could see in front of him—audaciously chopping off most of this giant tree off with his viewfinder.

Peryer’s focus on the tree’s roots reflects a reoccurring visual motif in the artist’s work, seen in photographs such as Tendril (2006) and Bhudda’s hand (2012), in which anthropomorphic qualities are bestowed on the plant life that surrounds us. In moody, black-and-white tones, the tree looks like its roots are squirming their way out of the earth. It might evoke any news story about a tourist lost in the bush, unprepared for the real conditions that native trees thrive in; suggesting that the trees themselves, tired of being misrepresented, might have a role to play in such a disappearance.

— Sian van Dyk, 2023