2014 The Last Huia (1907)

Media: bronze, stainless steel and 24 carat gold.

Huia, in particular, are birds often featuring in Dibble’s sculptures. In part they tribute the area where he has his studio – last seen in the Tararua ranges, in the Manawatu in 1907, the date noted in the artwork’s title. But also just for the beauty of the birds, such admiration is what led to them being hunted to extinction both by European collectors like Buller and by Maori who prized the feathers as symbols of mana.

The Huia in the sculpture is perched on a stainless steel stand, forming an elegant juxtaposition of the two materials – the bird sensuously modelled while the stand is fabricated with precise straight angles and a circle.

The bird may stand stock still but it is on fire, flames pushing up out of the form, gilded to produce the bright shine of the flames. It suggests a burial, the final rites in an Eastern ceremony or the sending out on a Viking ship of a body that is set alight. But perhaps it is a Phoenix and we wait to see if it might be born anew.