Maybe it a childhood spent rummaging around many a rust filled box of bric-a-brac that my farming grandfather hoarded "just in case he might need it"! or the sheer joy I used to experience whenever I spent the weekend on the farm with grandad (feeding out the hay from the back of the old ox-blood red tractor was a particular favourite chore - not) - but I have a total love of rusted iron, aged timber and ancient rural buildings and infrastructure. You can imagine then my delight at the new trend for cor-ten steel! Can't help but adore the whole concept of something with a patina - in a landscape it somehow provides a comfy lived in feel - like an well worn dry-as-a-bone - the more its allowed to weather the better it all becomes. Or maybe it is the delight in knowing, that at the edge of everything we do as humans are the sticky fingers of nature ready to gradually embrace our constructions over time and slowly and surely begin to take over?
Here are a few of my favourite images from from my travels throughout NZ that reflect this concept...
