‘Echo's Tree’ is a result of Denis O'Connor's recent Blumhardt Foundation Residency in Australia. Here the artist immersed himself in translation: looking for images to mirror the texts of influential New Zealand poets of our time, such as Andrew Johnston, Geoff Cochrane and Hera Lindsay Bird. The artist describes the framework of the residency as producing "crafted objects in communion with altered readymades, personal histories that criss-cross and are bound to larger social or natural histories." He sourced a suite of old cedar wood boxes from Japan that had once held bowls for a tea ceremony or calligraphic scrolls. He set about recladding these readymades – which already had a rich cultural history – with a found material that was weathered and coded with narratives of place: roof slates from historical buildings around New Zealand, including Christchurch Cathedral. After a 35-year hiatus from working with clay, ‘Echo's Tree’ sees O'Connor come full circle, returning to make objects in this versatile and evocative material.