About the artists

Breath of Weather Collective

This project is a collaborative group called the Breath of Weather Collective. Regional locations and participant-contacts are:

– Cook Islands: Te Ipukarea Society; Kelvin Passfield, Paris Tutty, Pouri Tanner, Sam Thomas, Terena Koteka-Wiki, Matt Blacka
– Kingdom of Tonga: Uili Lousi
– Island of Niue: Mark and Ahi Cross
– Samoa: Maina Vai
– Whakatane, Aotearoa: James McCarthy
– Haumoana, Aotearoa: Dianne Reefman, Ricks Terstappen
– Taranaki, Aotearoa: Pasha Clothier
– Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa: Phil Dadson

Special thanks to John Cousins for sharing aeolian insights.

Denise Batchelor

Denise Batchelor is a visual artist based in the Hokianga, in the "far north" of Aotearoa New Zealand. Working primarily in photography and video, her practice is predominately focused on her engagement with the natural environment; capturing fleeting moments that are often overlooked or unseen. She frequently photographs and videos the changing weather patterns on the sky, sea and sandhills from her home and on her walks along the beach. A recipient of artist residencies and art awards, Batchelor has exhibited widely in galleries, museums and festivals in New Zealand and internationally. Her work is held in public and private collections. In 2020, as part of the New Zealand Festival, her work was projected onto the exterior of Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

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

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 contemporary installation art. She first began learning cloak-making skills from noted Māori weaver Diggeress Te Kanawa, and spent many years researching and teaching Māori Material Culture at Auckland University. As an artist, Maureen is committed to innovation in a way that is deeply collaborative. Since her retirement from university teaching she has worked with or mentored contemporary artists and weaving groups in the wider community. Lander received Ngā Tohu ā  Tā Kingi Ihaka Award from Te Waka Toi in 2019 and was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2020. In 2022 she was made a distinguished alumnus by the University of Auckland and was awarded an Arts Foundation Laureate Award.

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

 

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

 

Rachel Shearer

Rachel Shearer investigates sound as a medium through a range of sonic practices – installations, composing, recording, writing as well as collaborating as a sound designer or composer for moving image and live performance events. Active as an experimental musician releasing audio publications both locally and internationally, Shearer’s work builds on her research, which explores practices related to a listening to the earth through Māori and Western frameworks. She has received numerous public commissions for site-specific sound installations including the permanent nine-channel sound installation The Flooded Mirror on the Auckland waterfront.

Ron Bull

Ron Bull is Tumuaki Whakaako at Otago Polytechnic. 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 is a Kai Tahu knowledge holder of Mātauranga Māori knowledge and a linguist. 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 for several years while living in Moscow. Other highlights include creating a sound installation for Cat Ruka's multimedia show Skulduggery at the Wellington Fringe Festival, and locally, collaborating with composer Claire Cowan on the sound for Alys Longley's Suture production at the Little Maidment Theatre.