aka The People’s Voice (2023). Thirty Wellington social housing tenants co-create a street exhibition and newspaper with David Cook, Anna Brown and Mark Amery. In times of housing insecurity, this culturally diverse team tells stories of activism, community and creativity. 30.000 copies of a 28-page tabloid, containing stories by the tenants, were distributed by tenants on the street and in copies of The Post newspaper. https://wellington.govt.nz/news-and-events/news-and-information/our-wellington/2023/02/cp-lightboxes
Nestled in a curve of the Waikato River in Hamilton is a suburb built on the dreams of post-war urban design. These images, made in the 1990s, form the basis of an exhibition at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery / Te Pūkenga Whakaata, Waikato Museum and Taupō Museum (2022, 2023). Jellicoe & Bledisloe is also a 108-page book, published by Rim Books.
On 22 February 2011 I heard the news about an earthquake striking my hometown of Christchurch. I flew back to see my family and to survey the damage. Much of the central city had collapsed, or was damaged beyond repair. Returning to Hamilton I unearthed an archive of around 6000 photographs I'd made in the city during the mid 1980s. Mesmerised by these images I started to rebuild my version of the city. The Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū exhibited this work (2015) and published it as Meet Me in the Square: Christchurch 1983-1987 (2014).
David Cook and Leala Faleseuga worked with children from Russell and Discovery Schools in Porirua to co-create a public art work exploring their collective visions for the city. Through workshopping and discussions, children took photographs and brainstormed town planning proposals. Leala transformed the images into colourful gum brichromates, which were tiled together like a giant tivaevae. The exhibition, which included a moving image projection, was presented in the windows of the vacated MacDonalds restaurant in the town square. Produced for TEZA Porirua 2015. https://teza.org.nz/2015/11/21/young-visionaries-of-porirua/
Tim Veling and David Cook collaborated with Freeville School in Christchurch, responding to its impending closure after the 2010-2011 earthquakes. Children were invited to imagine futures for the transitional site. The mural was mounted in the New Brighton shopping centre, provoking discussions about the voice of youth in town planning. The project was created for TEZA 2013.
The Base - New Zealand's largest shopping complex. 78 stores. 2600 free car parks. Built on land returned to Tainui Maori in the 1995 Deed of Settlement, as reparation for land forcibly seized by the Crown during the 1860s Land Wars. Owned and operated by Tainui Group Holdings Ltd. (Hamilton, 2012). Exhibited in Survey Hamiton at the Waikato Museum, 2014.
I trace a journey, following the parallel arteries of the Waikato River and River Road from Hamilton to Ngaruawahia. At 600m intervals I take a pair of photographs; one from the road, and one from the river. This is an ordinary journey, full of extraordinary revelations of ecologies and histories. Published by Rim Books as River Road: Journeys through Ecology, 2011.
1984-1985
Rotowaro is of one of New Zealand's largest coal-mining operations. In 1984, when I first set foot in the place, Rotowaro supported a community of 400 people. I continued to visit Rotowaro over a twenty year period, taking photographs, recording oral histories and collecting artefacts. The story traces the life and death of the mining community following the announcement of its closure, and observes the expanding opencast mine that eventually swallowed the land on which the township was built.
1986-1989
Rotowaro township is evacuated and cleared, in preparation for opencast mining.
1990-2012
The ‘Rotowaro Township’ mine is non-stop operation, supplying coal to a thermal power station at Huntly and a steel mill at Glenbrook. The only remaining reminder of the former township is an abandoned carbonisation factory.
