FORECAST
Julieanna Preston, Layne Waerea and Mick Douglas
FORECAST is a collaborative, durational performance writing work that occurs across Te Tuhi’s Reeves Road and Digital Billboards. The work builds on Word Weathers, a 24-hour, online performance for more than 55 writers that welcomed the sequence of dawns as the earth rotated. Using Google Spreadsheet instead of Zoom as the writing space, FORECAST adopts the same pared-back keyboard aesthetic of that performance to collectively predict, anticipate and wilfully imagine what the future of our climate might be. As the digital billboard rehearses the collaborative practice over time, the Reeves Road billboard post three moments in that practice as static images, the messaging on the billboards aims to provoke the curiosity, concern and bemusement of gallery visitors and road users.
Kōea O Tāwhirimātea – Weather Choir: Voicing the Wind
Breath of Weather Collective
Collaborating participants and Te Moana Nui a Kiwa locations: Uili Lousi & Kasimea Sika (Tongatapu, Kingdom of Tonga); Maina Vai & whānau (Upolu, 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, Cook Is); Mark & Ahi Cross (Liku, Island of Niue).
Kōea O Tāwhirimātea – Weather Choir: Voicing the Wind
In early 2022 the Breath of Weather Collective was formed by Phil Dadson to realise a distributed Weather Choir. Collaborators from eight coastal locations, connected by the ocean Te Moana Nui a Kiwa, constructed free-standing outdoor aeolian harp instruments from local materials and DIY harp basics mailed by Dadson. Each of the island hosts captured harmonic, wind-song records of changing daily and seasonal conditions with video and audio by mobile phone over one year: solstice to solstice (2022–2023). The work embraces all coastal communities affected by climate change within a poetic, present-time capsule of intensifying winds and inundating shorelines. Dadson has devised a video/sound installation to represent the collective voices of Kōea O Tāwhirimātea. Two aeolian harps, Tamanui and Nga-hau-e-whā perform continuously from the rooftop of Te Tuhi, creating their own chorus of harmonics from winds circulating across the Tāmaki estuary—silent when still, harmonious when calm, dissonant when wild.
Tamanui
James McCarthy
A tripod-style aeolian harp of pinus radiata poles, one galvanised bin resonator, galvanised bolts, nylon wires, matai bridges, acrylic paint, contact microphone and cables and stationed on Te Tuhi’s roof, topped by a WWN flag. Visible from the outside of the building, and the window above the reception desk.
Nga-hau-e-whā
Phil Dadson
A mast-style aeolian harp made of pinus radiata, two polystyrene box resonators, nylon wires, screws, stainless steel bolts, rimu bridges, epoxy resin, acrylic paint, contact microphones and cables, stationed on Te Tuhi’s roof and visible from the interior courtyard.
Breath of Weather Collective give thanks to CNZ Arts Council of NZ Toi Aotearoa; John Cousins for shared aeolian harp insights; Simon Ogston for Uruamo drone footage; Brett Graham for Te Reo Māori advice; and the partners, wives and husbands of participants.
Sun Gate: Ha‘amonga a Maui
Kalisolaite ‘Uhila
Technical crew: James Tapsell-Kururangi, Josh Savieti and Nonga Tutu (camera); live-stream operator Andrew Kennedy
On the Autumn equinox, 21 March 2023, the sun moved north across the celestial equator and day and night were of exactly equal length. This event was marked by the sun piercing through a notch on the limestone-coral trilithon Ha‘amonga a Maui in Eastern Tonga and Kalisolaite ‘Uhila’s body at solar zenith. He sat by the ancient 13th-century gateway from dawn through intense sun, heavy rain and overcast weather for over ten hours, accompanied by a continuous live-stream that radiated around the Earth. Kalisolaite’s body binds the path of the sun to our warming atmosphere; the live-cast mends digital flows between Aotearoa and Tonga after the violent eruption of the submarine volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai on 15 January 2022. The documentation premiers in Te Tuhi’s atrium to become part of daily life for passers-by with both live-stream from a camera worn by Kalisolaite and a long shot of the durational performance.
Weather Stations
The Paul Cullen Archive has invited two artists, J.A. Kennedy and Ammon Ngakuru (a former artist-assistant of Paul Cullen), to reconfigure Cullen’s 2009 installation, Weather Stations, for the Te Tuhi courtyard. Cullen (1949–2017) initially presented the site-related work as part of Headland Sculpture on the Gulf on Waiheke Island. The artist created a series of para-functional structures, reminiscent of meteorological rain gauges, made of galvanised steel framing and concrete, hosing, pipes, and glass vitrines, sited on paved sections on a sloping bank. In this reassembled and updated version, the concrete tiles that functioned as the base in the original installation guide the dimensions of a new support structure within Te Tuhi’s courtyard. In the courtyard, steel frames are mounted on modified bases to closely mirror the original Waiheke Island layout, with the exception of any steel frames that no longer exist. This plein air artwork is accompanied by three of Cullen’s ink drawings (1977; 2008–2009).
Ammon Ngakuru worked with Paul Cullen as an artist assistant between 2016 and 2017, participating in the installation of Cullen’s Tidal series (c. 2015–2016) and his installation Things From Geology (Underworld) in 2017 as part of Headland Sculpture on the Gulf on Waiheke Island. Since 2021, J.A. Kennedy has worked with the Paul Cullen Archive, assisting with archiving and the reinstallation of Cullen’s Discovery of Oxygen series.
Ngaru Paewhenua (the wave that comes ashore)
Installation by Maureen Lander with video projection by Denise Batchelor and sound by Stìobhan Lothian
In Ngāpuhi whakapapa the ancestors arrived in Hokianga by sea, their migrating waka assisted on the journey by three great waves: Ngaru nui, Ngaru roa and Ngaru Paewhenua. The installation remembers the third great wave that carried the waka ashore but is also concerned with the myriad impending effects of climate change on today’s oceans, in particular the threat of inundation and coastal erosion caused by increasingly severe storms, rising seas and big waves.
Wave Skirt
Maureen Lander
A suspended ‘maro’ (apron) of harakeke tags, muka and laser-cut acrylic ‘foam’, Wave Skirt echoes the scalloped formation of waves as they come ashore with their frothy skirts of foam.
MĀKŪ, te hā o Haupapa: Moisture, the breath of Haupapa
Collaborating artists: Ron Bull (voice); Stefan Marks (programming); Janine Randerson (video); Rachel Shearer (sound); Heather Purdie, glaciologist and scientific advisor, University of Canterbury
Live data stream courtesy of NIWA | Climate, Freshwater & Ocean Science
The cracking and melting Haupapa glacier and lake, Aotearoa’s fastest growing body of water, are present at Te Tuhi through a live cast of mākū, life-giving moisture. Tiny bubbles of ancient breath and atmosphere are pressed inside Haupapa’s glacial ice—including sea breezes, pollens, carbon dioxide and methane, as well as the ash of Australian fires. Ron Bull’s voice, recorded live on the lake, is woven through the sound and images to gift and acknowledge Kāi Tahu matauraka, words and names of the elemental ancestors. Glaciologist Heather Purdie’s research has centred on Haupapa lake and Haupapa glacier for many years. She has discovered that the glacier is melting from within crevasses in the glacier accumulation area that retain the sun’s heat; and that at the end of Haupapa, there are submerged ice ramps in the lake, which cause large icebergs to split off that accelerate glacier recession.
Rachel and Janine gathered images and sounds from visits to Haupapa glacier in March and September in 2022 with Ron and Heather as guides. Spring is the most turbulent month when ice calves off, separating from the terminus of the glacier and the water is grey, while in March in late summer the water is clear and bright blue. Sound sequences occur in response to specific weathers and wind directions, constructed from atmospheric field and hydrophone recordings from 30 metres deep in the pro-glacial lake, digitally manipulated to create layered ambient textures.
The artists relinquish the ordering and qualities of sound and video to the weather conditions of Aoraki, recorded by NIWA instruments in place near the Haupapa glacier. Stefan created a connection hub gathering the NIWA data stream, which is then used by the reactive installation to subtly alter the brightness, direction, and movement of the images and sounds according to the real-time weather conditions, and wind direction. Depending on the weather, the image changes and the sound and vocal sequence is endlessly variable. On days of high solar radiation, bright, clear ice and sun predominate and also move the images on screen accordingly, on cloudy days, the image darkens.
Field of Heat and Dust
Nujoom Alghanem
Sound editor: Ahmad ElHabbal Mehdi
Field of Heat and Dust is a digital photograph of Aisha Al Naqbi, a female honey hunter who lives in Shis, a small town in the northern region of the United Arab Emirates. This image was taken during the making of Nujoom Alghanem’s documentary film Honey, Rain, and Dust (2016), which focuses on her narrative and that of another local beekeeper in relation to their unique activities in domesticating bees and hunting for honey. This bottle of honey was the only amount she could find during the winter season of 2016.
Aisha is also a farmer and an expert in astronomy, particularly the stars and their impact on weather and plants. Her life revolves around finding honey at the top of the mountains surrounding her area and selling it for a living. Her struggle began when the weather started to change, the rain became scarce, and dust enveloped her town almost for the whole year. The Summer seemed endless, as the poetic inscription recounts.
The sound composition playing nearby the Project Wall is remixed from Nujoom’s 2016 film Honey, Rain, and Dust by Ahmad ElHabbal, and the music is composed by Mohammed Haddad.