About the artists
Breath of Weather Collective
The Breath of Weather Collective is a collaborative group from across Te Moana Nui A Kiwa. Regional locations and participants are:
Collaborating participants and Te Moana Nui a Kiwa locations: Uili Lousi & Kasimea Sika (Kingdom of Tonga); Maina Vai & whānau (Samoa); Pasha Clothier (Parihaka/Taranaki, Aotearoa); James McCarthy (Whakatane, Aotearoa); Phil Dadson (Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa); Dianne Reefman & Ricks Terstappen (Haumoana, Aotearoa); Kelvin Passfield & Paris Tutty (Rarotonga); Mark & Ahi Cross (Liku, Niue)
Special thanks to John Cousins for sharing aeolian insights.
Denise Batchelor
Denise Batchelor is a visual artist based in Hokianga, Aotearoa New Zealand. Working primarily in photography and video, her practice predominantly focuses on her engagement with the natural environment; capturing fleeting moments that are often overlooked or unseen. She frequently photographs and videos changing weather patterns on sky, sea and sandhills from her home, and on her beach walks. A recipient of artist residencies and awards, Batchelor has exhibited in galleries, museums and festivals in New Zealand and internationally.
Janine Randerson
Janine Randerson is an artmaker of video installations, 16mm films, sound and online artworks, and she often practices in collaboration with environmental scientists and community groups. Janine’s book Weather as Medium: Toward a Meteorological Art (MIT Press, 2018) focuses on modern and contemporary artworks that engage with our present and future weathers. Janine also facilitates art exhibitions, events and screening programmes.
Julieanna Preston
Julieanna Preston speculates on the vitality of materials through durational site-situated live art, installations, videos and performance writing. Recent works include breath-taking (2019, Denmark), RPM Hums (2018, NZ), Being Under Symphony (2019, USA), “You are embued with tolerance…” (2019, Architecture & Culture), “Road Care” (Jen Archer-Martin, 2020, Performance Care), “motor-mouthing” (2020, Voice and New Materialism), HARK (2021, Wellington).
Kalisolaite ‘Uhila
Kalisolaite ‘Uhila was born in 1981 in the Kingdom of Tonga. He lives and works in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. ‘Uhila’s practice revolves around performance. He has made many durational performance works, which are often informed by his Tongan heritage. Tradition, masculinity and cultural bias are ideas that ‘Uhila explores. Through his performance works he often seeks to promote a sense of understanding and togetherness. ‘Uhila has received multiple residencies for his practice, including the Montalvo Arts Centre Residency, California (2018); Youkobo Art Space Residency, Tokyo (2018) and ZK/U & Ifa Galerie Residency, Berlin (2016). In 2014, he was selected as a finalist in the Walters Prize for his 2012 work Mo’ui Tukuhausia. In 2020, ‘Uhila was awarded the Harriet Friedlander Residency by the Arts Foundation of New Zealand.
Layne Waerea
Layne Waerea (Ngāti Wāhiao, Ngāti Kahungunu, Pākehā) is an artist and educator interested in site-specific, socio-legal performance to video and photograph, and related performance writing and presentation. Recent work includes Māori Love Hotel (2020, Auckland), But what if someone wanted to sue a river? (2019, panel presentation AAANZ) and an ongoing participatory project – the chasing fog club (Est. 2014).
Maureen Lander MNZM
Maureen Lander (Ngāpuhi, Te Hikutū) is a multi-media installation artist whose work has contributed significantly to the recognition of weaving in a contemporary art context. Her artwork draws inspiration from woven fibre taonga in museum collections, as well as from installation art practices. As an artist, Maureen is committed to innovation in a way that is deeply collaborative. Over recent years she has worked with or mentored a number of contemporary artists and weaving groups in the wider community. She has received wide recognition for her work including an Arts Laureate award in 2022.
Mick Douglas
Mick Douglas is an artist and academic working across performance, art, social practice and performative writing. Recent work includes performance installations at MONA and The Performance Arcade Wellington, establishing ‘untitled station’ – a residential arts research place in the Australian Wimmera, and writings in journals Performance Research and JAR.
Nujoom Alghanem
Nujoom Alghanem (b. 1962, Dubai) is an Emirati poet, artist, and film director. She has published eight poetry collections and produced numerous films including seven feature documentaries and short fiction, documentary, and art films. Her films have won over 40 regional and international prizes. In 2019, she was the solo artist of the UAE National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, one of the most prestigious art events in the globe. She also received the Pride of the UAE Medal through the Mohammed bin Rashid Government Excellence Award. Nujoom co-founded Nahar Productions, a film production company based in Dubai, and is a professional mentor and trainer in art practices, filmmaking and creative writing. She is currently a trustee of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, as well as an advisor to educational and cultural organizations.
Paul Cullen
Paul Cullen (1949–2017) studied various disciplines, all of which informed his artistic practice and methodology. He graduated from the University of Auckland with a Bachelor of Science in 1971, a Diploma of Fine Arts (Hons) in 1975, a Master of Arts in 2000 and a PhD in Fine Arts in 2007. Cullen was a sculptor and installation artist. His celebrated career has seen his work exhibited nationally and internationally and he was the recipient of several awards and residencies including: Moët et Chandon Artist Fellowship, France (1996) and a Senior Fulbright Award at Auburn University, Alabama (2012).
Cullen’s career spanned 40 years and he exhibited across Australasia. In the last two decades of his career he pursued exhibition and itinerant projects in numerous international centres including Manchester, London, Halifax, Stockholm, Sydney, Melbourne, Seoul, Chung-Buk, São Paolo, Cheongu, Alabama, Los Angeles, Marfa, Munich and Berlin.
Phil Dadson
Phil Dadson is a transdisciplinary artist, musician/composer with a practice spanning some fifty years across video, sound, performance, drawing, building and performing with experimental musical instruments. He is the founder of the acclaimed music/performance collective From Scratch. A lecturer in Intermedia at the Elam School of Fine Arts from 1977, he left in 2001 to take up full-time art practice. Awards include NZ Arts Foundation Laureate, ONZM, Antarctic Artist Fellowship, Fulbright-Wallace Headlands residency. Dadson lives in Tamaki Makaurau/Auckland and is represented by Trish Clark Gallery & Circuit.org.nz.
Rachel Shearer
Rachel Shearer investigates sound as a medium through a range of practices—public urban/site specific and gallery-based installations, studio-based composing of experimental sound experiences/music, collaborating as a sound designer or composer for moving image and live performance events and also writing. A focus in Shearer’s work is thinking through Māori and Western philosophies and technologies about the materiality of sound and how we listen to the whenua.
Ron Bull
Ron Bull is a Kai Tahu matauraka knowledge holder and a linguist. He is part of the Kaihaukai Art Collective and together with Simon Kaan has produced social exchanges based around food nationally and internationally, including at International Symposium of Electronic Arts (ISEA) and Te Papa Museum. He has worked on collaborative art projects with artists such as Alex Monteith. He is a researcher on cross-cultural collaboration and engagement with place-based narratives through social art practice.
Stefan Marks
Stefan Marks is a Creative Technologist in the School of Future Environments at Auckland University of Technology. His main areas of research are collaborative extended reality (XR) and data visualisation or, as he prefers to call it, “data-driven, immersive storytelling”. Stefan creates tools to turn complex or abstract information into visual, audible and other sensory forms to allow the human brain to perceive, discover and understand patterns and relations. Some of his projects have dealt with earthquake data, the human nasal cavity anatomy and artificial neural network connectivity.
Stìobhan Lothian
Stìobhan Lothian is a sound artist/composer based in Aotearoa. His sound resume extends from near—collaborating on performance soundscapes at Unitec’s School of Contemporary Dance—to far, working with sound artist/musician Alexei Borisov while living in Moscow. Other highlights include working with choreographers Alyx Duncan and Alexa Wilson; creating a sound installation for Cat Ruka’s Skulduggery; collaborating with composer Claire Cowan on Alys Longley’s Suture production.