As thousands of refugees flee from war-torn Syria and the Middle East, Auckland artist Juliette Laird's work takes on extra meaning. She tells Rebecca Fox how her work relates to issues of migration, adaptation and taking root.
Artist Juliette Laird loves the tactile nature of her work, creating branches and leaves from wool and wire. In the past few years, she has been creating colourful ''branches'' adorned with knitted leaves which she ''attaches'' to real trees for display.
The idea was based on the concept of people migrating to another country, ''grafting'' themselves into a new society, and began with making knitted ''extensions'' to pohutakawa, she said.
As she had come to New Zealand with her parents from England when she was 11-years-old, the concept resonated with her.
''We moved a lot, so I didn't feel I had anywhere to call home; there was that sense of not belonging.''
Her branches were first exhibited in Gdansk, Poland, at the Narracje 5 Festival after an invitation from its New Zealand curator Rob Garrett.
It was while she was knitting leaves for the exhibition that she discovered the story of the Polish World War 2 orphans who were sent to New Zealand in 1944 for a temporary stay at Pahiatua children's camp, although their stay became permanent after the war.
''It became very important to keep making the work. I like my work to have a story in it.''
So, the idea then became to knit a leaf for every child that came to New Zealand.
Taking that story to Poland was interesting, she said. Most Poles did not know about what happened, as much of that part of the country's past had been written out of the history books under Communism.
At the festival, her branches were attached to trees in an area that had formally been a market garden and an allotment, and were lit up at night.
Some of those branches will feature in an exhibition in Dunedin this month alongside new works.
It is painstaking work to create the branches. Laird winds wool around multiple strands of wire and uses double-sided tape to attach each knitted ''leaf''.
Knitting represented women's care for children, and also the process of ''knitting'' together something broken.
A painter by training, she found the process similar, especially the use of colours. The variety in wool colours gave her plenty of options.
''I really enjoy that side of the work.''
An impatient knitter as a child, Ms Laird had memories of stretching a scarf to make it longer in an effort to finish the project.
''It's not been until I was older. I do like knitting and hand-crafted things.''
For the Polish exhibition, she tried to use colours that evoked the New Zealand landscape, and created branches of European fruit trees, such as apples, cherries and plums, that she imagined the Polish children might have dreamt of. So, there were lots of blue and yellow, red and pink ''spring colours''.
''As a child I remember a pear tree in the garden so ...''
The branches were supposed to be ''fantastical'' or ''imaginary'', conjuring up the feeling of light, she said.
At the base of each ''branch'' was a dart to embed in the tree and they were suspended in pools of light.
Ms Laird, who also teaches art to intermediate-aged children part-time, had not seen the venue, instead having to rely on photographs of the avenue and measurements of the distance between trees sent from Poland.
She practised putting up the branches on a couple of trees in a park near her Auckland home but the rest was guesswork.
''I needed to work out how many were going to go in each tree and the distance between each for the wiring. I'm amazed it was all as I imagined and it all fitted perfectly.''
In Dunedin, she will also show some of her newer ''branches'' and her foray into ''saplings'' - little trees made in the same way.
''They're about 50cm and have roots. I see these as little self-growing saplings standing up on their roots.''
They reference the next step in the migration process to putting down roots and standing on their own feet, she said.
''You can be at home but not completely rooted in New Zealand for several generations before you feel like you belong in a place.''
The refugee situation in Europe meant those sorts of issues were at the forefront of many people's minds, she said.
As a trained painter every now and again she felt the urge to paint but she had not found anything she wanted to paint.
''Wool as a material, the quality of it, the tactile feel of it is like the feel of putting paint on a canvas.''
In her final year of art school she found a lot of her work involved images coming off the wall that urged people to touch and feel them.
''As soon as I left art school, colour, fabrics and things that are very tactile in the hand, I found I enjoyed.''
She wanted people to touch as well as look at her work.
''In Poland, people did that, people lifted their children up to touch the leaves gently.''
The work was also exhibited last year at Wellington's Museum of City and Sea, as part of Celebrating Everything Polish.
