EOY Final Exhibition
- 25 November 2025
A Muddied Land
The Hauraki/Piako region, my childhood home, once forest and swamp, now extensively modified into farmland. The work investigates how combining natural materials, such as river mud and water with historical photographs and the traditions of watercolour can interrogate and unsettle the established conventions and idealised representations that typify the Western landscape painting tradition.
In this context, landscape painting becomes not merely a depiction of scenery but an act of inquiry - one that exposes layered histories of land use, loss, and adaptation, and reconsiders how belonging and responsibility might be visually expressed. I incorporate mud and water collected from the Piako River, materials often chemically compromised by agricultural runoff.[1] These locally sourced elements physically embed the land’s history into each work, carrying traces of both natural processes and human intervention. The use of unstable, impermanent substances draws attention to the ongoing vulnerability of the wetland ecosystem, making environmental change and degradation materially present within the work itself.
This body of work is grounded in an awareness of the devastation inflicted on land, flora, fauna, and human communities when decisions are driven solely by profit - when short-term economic gain eclipses ecological integrity and social wellbeing. Environmental transformation, once normalised, often becomes invisible; forgetting can serve as a tool of power. Erasure of the past helps preserve the status quo and allows dominant narratives to remain unchallenged.
The practice navigates a tension: on one hand, I seek to reveal the story of ecological devastation brought about by colonisation; on the other, I honour my family’s search for a better life. These narratives, like all relationships between living and non-living entities, are inseparably intertwined. Making these layers of relationship, memory, and history visible within the Hauraki/Piako area feels essential to end the forgetting.
All works – watercolour, river mud on paper, wax medium
LH Wall
The Great Swamp now Being Reclaimed by the Government.
Drainage Cuts on the Route of the Main Canal in the Piako Swamp.
The Original Dalgety Homestead.
Winning 90,000 Acres from Sea and Swamp.
RH Wall
A Wonder-waking Project.
A Digger-type Dredge Working on the Hauraki Plains.
My Grandmother and my Father Laying a Path.
[1] Initially, gathering and using whenua and water from the Piako River caused me discomfort, even in small quantities the act risked echoing the extractive behaviours of settlers, including my own ancestors. The counsel offered by Ngāti Paoa has helped me to proceed with care. I am grateful to Arnold Gurau and Ngāti Paoa for their guidance.