Jo Cringle
Bio
Jo Cringle is a nature-based Artist whose practice weaves together memory, place, and materiality. Working with foraged and repurposed materials, Jo creates circular handmade papers embedded with watermarks and painted using natural pigments and inks. Each work is both an object and a conversation—exploring material culture, belonging, reciprocity, and our role as stewards of the Earth.
Raised in Tairāwhiti, Gisborne, Jo’s return to her home soils after years abroad deeply informs her creative direction. The natural beauty of the East Coast and Aotearoa New Zealand is a constant source of inspiration, grounding her work in themes of authenticity, the sacred, and connection to land and her inhabitants.
Jo holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Massey University (2011) and has exhibited in Wellington and Melbourne. She loves teaching others the joy and intimacy of working with natural materials. Her practice continues to evolve through a dialogue between tradition, memory, and ecological consciousness.
Description
Circular handmade Paper made out of Forestry Slash washed up during Cyclone Gabrielle and flood damaged book pages. This work opens a conversation around ecological stewardship (or Industry's lack of) but also resilience and regeneration/transformation in a general sense, both ecologically and sociologically.
It features an Ouroborous (localised as our endangered Orea (hyphen above O) / New Zealand longfin eel) painted in locally foraged natural pigment. The Orea is revered in Te Ao Maori as Guardians of our waterways, embodying deep cultural knowledge and resilience - able to live in duality, both fresh and salt water systems. Ouroborous is an ancient symbol where the serpent consumes itself and is reborn from its own body, representing the eternal cycle of life, death, and rebirth and the unity of all things.
Social - @connective_creations
Contact - jocringle@gmail.com willowingweep@gmail.com
Link to research
This piece connects to this kaupapa both conceptually and materialistically. It speaks to transforming the greif into hope through collective action, destruction through to rebirth. When pulling this paper from the vat I truley did feel the Mowai, "the weight of water" - shaping debris into a whole new form.
