Deforestation is highlighted at Stratford's Percy Thomson Gallery

Artist Sue Cooke producing work for A Songless Land in her Whanganui studio. Photo / Matt Smith

A Songless Land, by Whanganui artist Sue Cooke, with its New Zealand premiere at Percy Thomson Gallery, opens on Friday night.

The exhibition immerses viewers - through ink, canvas and paper - in deforestation and regeneration, and highlights natural beauty to focus on protecting New Zealand's small and diminishing indigenous forest stock.

There was a time when the early European settlers' children couldn't hear their teachers in the schoolroom due to the deafening indigenous birdsong. The birds thrived in an ecosystem of mature forest with columns and canopies of kauri, beech, rimu and tōtara giants.

In 2015 Sue Cooke received a year-long grant from The Pollack Krasner Foundation in New York that funded drawing, research and development of proposals for artwork based on the past and current deforestation of New Zealand's indigenous forests.

A Songless Land is one of the proposals that grew out of drawing in Northland's kauri forests and Southland's beech forests.

Biodiversity held a special place in global environmental history due to the isolation of an island nation many miles from larger landmasses. The imagery in A Songless Land references destruction, healing and the beauty of New Zealand's indigenous forests. It highlights the ease and speed with which mankind can annihilate mature stands of trees hundreds of years old but gives hope for the forests' ability to heal itself.

A Songless Land is made up of three distinct series:

In the large gallery eight tall thin, collagraphs on canvas focus on the theme of destruction using totems and ghost trees inspired by the dead kauri trees of Northland and the mature beech trees of Southland.

The centre piece will be Long Hee Lee, measuring 3.5m high by 16m long focusing on the theme of regeneration. The work will be made up of 20 loose canvas banners, depicting an amphitheatre of regenerating kamahi forest in Southland, at the site of the wholesale destruction of mature podocarp forest by European and Chinese loggers and goldminers from the 1870s to 1950s.

The Beech at Ohau series of 11 monoprints highlights the melancholy beauty of the surviving beech forests.

A Songless Land will appeal to all age groups. Deforestation is an environmental issue that affects all communities.

■ The exhibition opens on Friday at 7pm. Join Sue for a conversation about her artwork on Saturday, March 2 at 11am at the gallery.