Seminar 4 Spring/September 2025

Making Kin

At the heart of my practice lies a profound concern for the future - how we might choose differently, honouring entire ecological systems rather than human interests alone. My work is guided by the idea that communities, rivers, birds, trees, fish, and the soil’s vibrant web of life are all part of one interconnected whole.

I focus particularly on the Hauraki Plains, once home to an immense kahikatea forest now entirely gone. The story of this place stands as a cautionary reminder of what is lost when decisions are driven solely by economic imperatives.

My thinking draws on Donna Haraway’s insistence that all earthlings are kin and her call to cultivate more responsible, compassionate forms of care - not as isolated species, but as entangled assemblages. In her words, we must “make kin”.

 

Works 2025 – watercolour, river mud on paper.

Winning 90,000 acres from sea and swamp.

The Great Swamp now being reclaimed by the Government.

The Piako Swamp Drainage Scheme.

The original Dalgety homestead.

My grandmother and my father.

A wonder-walking project.

The reclamation of the Piako Swamp.

An important undertaking.
 

^{Haraway, Donna. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Experimental Futures. Technological Lives, Scientific Arts, Anthropological Voices. Duke University Press.}