Working Method
Susurrus | Communion | Awen
My practice is grounded in a relational framework I name Sussurrus / Communion / Awen, a triad that describes how attention, exchange, and making come into alignment.
Susurrus
Sussurrus is a practice of listening. It unfolds through walking, lingering, and sustained presence, where attention is guided not by intention, but by attraction. In this state, land, material, and subtle phenomena begin to draw focus of their own accord. Sussurrus establishes the relational field from which the work arises.
Communion
Communion names a deepening of relation. Through stillness, touch, and embodied dialogue, land, water, materials, and living presences are approached as responsive partners. Communication often arrives as sensation or feeling, which is then unpacked through reflective writing as a means of translation rather than explanation.
Awen
Awen describes a state of co-creative emergence within the act of making. Here, control is softened, allowing materials, elemental forces, and duration to shape the work alongside the artist. Marks appear through process, chance, and indexical trace, revealing authorship as shared rather than imposed.
Together, Sussurrus / Communion / Awen articulate a cyclical, process-led approach in which body, land, and material participate as active agents in the formation of meaning.
Water as Relational Material
Many mornings are spent along the Mangakakahi Stream, and the Te Arikiroa Geothermal Channel- both upstream and downstream, engaging in sustained observation and presence. I work with early light and current, attending closely to shifts in movement, reflection, and flow and how these changes respond to my human presence. These encounters are documented through video and photography, as well as taken into explorative mediums: forming part of an ongoing archive of attentional research.
Water is approached as a responsive material rather than a neutral medium. I collect water not only from the Mangakakahi - but from various tributaries, lakes, waterfalls, pools, oceans and weather events including a heavy emphasis on the Geothermal Waters of Rotorua.
This water is incorporated directly into my studio practice, functioning as both material and record of place. Through repeated engagement, observation, and use, the waters of my place in the world become an active participants in the work.
Water is approached as a responsive material rather than a neutral medium. I collect water not only from the Mangakakahi - but from various tributaries, lakes, waterfalls, pools, oceans and weather events including a heavy emphasis on the Geothermal Waters of Rotorua.
This water is incorporated directly into my studio practice, functioning as both material and record of place. Through repeated engagement, observation, and use, the waters of my place in the world become an active participants in the work.
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Sulphur and Geothermal Process
My engagement with sulphur as a creative material began through early, lived proximity to geothermal environments in Tikitere, within the Ruahine geothermal field. This long-term familiarity has informed an ongoing material relationship rather than a symbolic interest.
In my current practice, I work across geothermal landscapes throughout the wider Rotorua region, undertaking site-responsive research that includes the collection of colour samples, photographic documentation of mineral formations, and close observation of sulphuric deposits and stratified geothermal surfaces. These environments offer material conditions and chromatic phenomena that are both highly specific to place and continuously in flux.
Recent research has focused on working directly within active fumarolic environments, using heat, steam, sulphur, pressure, and duration as co-determining forces. Through burial and exposure processes, sulphur leaves indexical traces on silk and natural textiles, allowing geological activity to act upon the material without mediation. In this way, volcanic topography functions not as subject matter, but as an active collaborator in the formation of the work.
In my current practice, I work across geothermal landscapes throughout the wider Rotorua region, undertaking site-responsive research that includes the collection of colour samples, photographic documentation of mineral formations, and close observation of sulphuric deposits and stratified geothermal surfaces. These environments offer material conditions and chromatic phenomena that are both highly specific to place and continuously in flux.
Recent research has focused on working directly within active fumarolic environments, using heat, steam, sulphur, pressure, and duration as co-determining forces. Through burial and exposure processes, sulphur leaves indexical traces on silk and natural textiles, allowing geological activity to act upon the material without mediation. In this way, volcanic topography functions not as subject matter, but as an active collaborator in the formation of the work.
Aboreal Listening and Reflective Process
Trees form an integral part of my relational methodology. Working within Rotorua’s podocarp forests and volcanic perimeters, I spend extended periods in quiet proximity to individual trees, particularly species such as rimu, mānuka and alder, allowing their form, rhythm and environmental presence to be felt and observed before any material response takes place.
This process is grounded in sustained listening and attentiveness. Reflective journalling follows each encounter, creating space to unpack the impressions, shifts and subtle understandings that arise through presence. Writing operates as both documentation and dialogue, tracing how embodied experience gradually shapes conceptual and material direction.
Insights gathered through this arboreal engagement inform decisions around pigment, fibre, surface and site, as well as conceptual direction. Trees are approached as living participants within shared ecological systems, in line with Tikanga Maori understandings and modes of relation
This process is grounded in sustained listening and attentiveness. Reflective journalling follows each encounter, creating space to unpack the impressions, shifts and subtle understandings that arise through presence. Writing operates as both documentation and dialogue, tracing how embodied experience gradually shapes conceptual and material direction.
Insights gathered through this arboreal engagement inform decisions around pigment, fibre, surface and site, as well as conceptual direction. Trees are approached as living participants within shared ecological systems, in line with Tikanga Maori understandings and modes of relation