Jono More is a self taught New Zealand artist, with a passion for ecology and a desire to express thoughts of conservation through his work. At 25, he has already had a successful start to his art career with having a selection of up-market New Zealand galleries exhibiting his work. Jono’s work is popular amongst conservationists, visitors to New Zealand, as well as ex-pat kiwis who appreciate New Zealand themed art. A small exhibition in 2004 saw some of his work purchased for the Beehive, and a year later, one of his images was chosen by the Department of Conservation to be the main design in their book commemorating the 10 year anniversary of the infamous Cave Creek Tragedy.
Printmaking is Jono’s chief artistic channel, with his main medium being woodcut. In this art form, a negative image is carved into a panel of wood before being inked with a roller and pressed onto paper. Most of his early works consist of a well defined black image having been printed from a single board. More recently however, Jono has been working with various tones and colours, meaning multiple wood boards are needed to be carved and inked for each print.
Jono’s woodcut prints reflect an ecological theme with his main subjects being iconic New Zealand native species. The cabbage tree or ti kouka, is a particular favorite subject for Jono as he grew up in a rural area of central South Island where stands of old and tortured cabbage trees dominate the hillsides. Most New Zealander’s can relate to cabbage trees in some way or another, weather in a positive or negative way, and thus it has proved to be a successful subject to work with. Jono hopes that through his representation of cabbage trees, he gives people a greater awareness of this species as well as its fight to remain part of the New Zealand’s rural landscape. Sales of Jono’s prints have in the past helped support him in growing thousands of young cabbage trees from seed and planting them out in the landscape. This in itself, Jono sees as being a form of art, as the placement of each young tree will have lasting affects on the land’s composition for perhaps centuries.
The area where Jono grew up gave him a great deal of artistic inspiration, not only because of the old cabbage tree stands, but also the numerous limestone outcrops and escarpments which still show Maori rock art which dates back hundreds of years. The mythical Opihi Taniwha, which has appeared in Jono's work, is one of New Zealand's most significant examples of pre-European art and decorates a cave where Jono spent a lot of time exploring in his younger years. There are many other rock drawings of which he stumbled across as a kid. Albatross, whales, giant lizards, human figures and moa are just a few of the charred images still remaining in the many limestone overhangs of the area and Jono hopes to incorporate these into his work more in the future.
These rock drawings can perhaps be seen as New Zealand’s first examples of graffiti, a genre of art of which Jono has recently experimented with. This came about as part of a campaign fighting for the protection of the Hectors and Maui Dolphins, two New Zealand endemic dolphins being driven to extinction by the fisheries industry. Due to the public’s ignorance on the matter, Jono took to graffiti as a tool to get the dolphins in the public eye and give awareness of their plight. Following his painting of many of the dolphins around the country, including some being killed by nets, Jono’s graffiti work got noted by many newspapers and one local television channel. Jono has no doubt that it was the illegal nature of the work aided by the attractive image of a beautiful dolphin species that resulted in his graffiti work getting so much attention. Eventually, Jono got caught by police with a spray can in hand and arrested for willful damage. This was followed by a Cambell Live story on national television of which Jono received an overwhelming positive response from. About a week after the story aired, the New Zealand Government announced a very important decision for the protection of the dolphins which will hopefully save them from further decline towards extinction.
With regard to his efforts in the conservation of the Hectors and Maui dolphins, it is no surprise that Jono also works in the wildlife conservation field. He received a BSc from University of Otago majoring in Ecology and now works on a variety of New Zealand’s threatened wildlife, monitoring populations and helping implement management strategies for their survival. Kiwi, kaka, rock wren, long tailed and short tailed bats are just a few of the species which he has been involved with in the last few years. This work takes Jono into some very remote and beautiful parts of New Zealand and thus it ties in nicely with his art career for the inspiration and new ideas it gives him.
