The heyday of the craft may have passed with the advent of modern manufacturing, but the forge fires were never fully dowsed.

Since the 1980s there's been renewed interest in the old skills, both as a hobby and as a form of art.

This weekend, the Artist Blacksmiths' Association NSW is opening an exhibition of metal sculpture at the Nexus Gallery in Bellingen based on the theme of 'discovery', or more specifically, the ramifications of the first encounters between European explorers and the Indigenous inhabitants of the Mid North Coast.

"It's 200 years since John Oxley crossed the Great Dividing Range and landed around the Port Macquarie area," said Colin Dray, one of the local exhibitors.

"The discovery had positive and negative aspects and we explored that as a theme."

Colin, a former Industrial Arts and Science teacher at Bellingen High, made his own discovery of the joys of blacksmithing about 20 years ago.

"Because I was doing industrial arts teaching, which is metalwork and woodwork, I started from a welding and fabrication background," he said. "Building useful things out of steel."

"Then I discovered that if you heated the steel and worked it, you could change its shape dramatically and have a lot more possibilities. There's a transformation that occurs that you can't get by welding."

"When I learned about that, I just deviated off the path of fabrication into blacksmithing. And once you've had a taste of it, you don't stop."

Colin is a life member of the Artist Blacksmiths' Association, which was formed in Wauchope over 25 years ago and originally operated out of Timbertown.

He has two pieces in the exhibition. Coolamon, which is shown on the front cover of the program, is a representation of the shallow vessel with curved sides traditionally used by Aboriginal women to carry water, bush tucker and babies.

"... an aesthetically sleek object of textured steel and copper, a contrast to both the original material of wood or tree bark and later substitutes in the form of colonial cast-offs, including discarded flour tins, metal buckets, and even hubcaps," writes Dr M. Kjellman-Chapin in the program notes.

The other piece, Terra Naillius (Nail Tree), represents the tremendous timespan of Aboriginal occupation before contact with Europeans.

"There's over 1000 nails representing generations of Indigenous people in a piece of carved timber that stands up like a tree," Colin said.

Towards the top, the iron nails that predominate become disordered and damaged, and they are interspersed with stainless steel nails denoting the new settlers.

"That represents the negative aspects of the cultural clash that occurred," Colin said.

Another notable piece is Steal Canoe? by exhibition coordinator Steve Gale.

Oxley's exploration party 'acquired' native canoes on the journey, and although the original form has been retained, Steve Gale's one is made of steel recycled from cars dumped in the forest.

"In the Port Macquarie exhibition, there was video footage playing of him and a grinder with a cutting disc and sparks flying everywhere as he's cutting the roof off a burnt-out station wagon," Colin said.

Discovery Fe26 opens at the Nexus Gallery on Sunday July 28 at 3pm and runs until August 23.