In her new series of work, Couch uses the gourd - or te hue - motif as a starting point for her delicate and detailed works, which reference both ancient customs and contemporary art traditions explored by Maori and non-Maori artists - from Theo Schoon to Rueben Paterson.

Couch's works - exquisitely rendered in graphite on board - are greatly informed by her training as a print maker. In them, the sensual shape of the gourd is transformed from one work to the next, from a sold object engraved with text, to a soft, plump grub moth into the light, white feathers of a great bird.

The gourd (te hue or calabash) has a history rich in cultural symbolism. In accounting for the creation of the universe, early Hawaiians claim that, the earth began as a calabash that the gods threw upward, where it became the sky, sun and moon; the stars grew from its seeds.

Its history in New Zealand began with the arrival of Maori, and its association with the creation of human beings is alluded to in the aphorism 'te kawai o te hue' (the shoots/offspring of the gourd). Te Hue continues to play an important symbolic role in ceremonial and religious practices and has particular significance in traditional Maori birthing rites, utilised as a vessel for returning the whenua (placenta) to its turangawaewae (ancestral land).

Natalie Couch is a New Zealand artist of Maori, Scottish, English and French descent. Her tribal affiliations are Ngati Tuwharetoa and Te Arawa. She completed a BFA at Elam in 1998 and currently lives in West Auckland with her partner, a wood carver, and her daughter.