Site specific installations: The Ministry of Art at Festival One 2026

These works are available to rent for your event. Please contact Caroline for more information or for an obligation-free quote.

Photography by Caitlin Lorigan

Membrane

Exploring the idea of thin places, this installation occupies a threshold between the physical and the intangible. A horizontal plane of fine white silk, printed with foliage from New Zealand’s native mid-story trees, is suspended above a well-travelled path, held between forest floor and canopy. The printed forms allude to the local ecological history, while the silk’s fluid response to wind resists any sense of permanence or fixity.

Viewed from below, the trees above remain visible through and beyond the inked leaf impressions, creating a fleeting sense of translucence—a moment where the familiar landscape feels lightly veiled. In this way, the work gestures toward a liminal space, where material presence and spiritual awareness briefly overlap.

As the silk lifts, settles, and catches the light, it reflects the shifting nature of spiritual encounter, inviting the viewer to pause and attend. Or it may simply register as a momentary interruption in the canopy overhead—noticed in passing, before the path continues on.

Photography by Caitlin Lorigan

Understory Over

Printed with the delicate forms of foliage gathered from the New Zealand forest understory, this broad plane of citrus-yellow silk is suspended horizontally above a well-travelled path. Responsive to the slightest movement of air, the fabric becomes a register for the unseen, revealing the presence of wind as it passes gently across the imprinted leaves and fronds.

Within this body of work, the layered structure of the forest becomes a metaphor for spiritual experience. Wind moves most forcefully through the upper canopy, while the understory receives its touch in softened, filtered currents. Here, motion is quieter and more intimate—felt rather than seen.

As the silk lifts and settles, it forms a shifting threshold where grounded, rooted plant forms meet a sense of weightlessness. The work invites viewers to slow their pace, to linger in this in-between space where the material and the immaterial briefly converge, and where the presence of the divine is suggested through movement, light, and breath.

On Earth

The melodic sound of the high-fired porcelain chimes in these over-sized wind chimes draw the viewer along a well travelled path leading to the river at Festival One’s Hartford Farm site in Karapiro. The installation is comprised of three sets of chimes, each with three fibre art tubes of varying lengths. New Zealand Merino wool is felted into seamless tubes, textural details on the surface of each having been formed from lustrous mohair locks. Each tube is supported by recycled plastic and a marine ply disk laser etched with kawakawa foliage.

Originally, these trios of tubes were a part of a larger installation, hung in the Ministry of Art in 2021, On Earth, as in Heaven. Here I explore sound as a conduit to spiritual experience. Designing the shape and materiality of the chimes was an important and collaborative part of the process of making this work and the chimes were made by a local Franklin artist, Margaret Bray. Margaret made samples in different clays and with different shapes until we achieved the sound that I was looking for. I wanted a sound that was weightless and melodic. Materiality is central to this work—each element chosen for its sensory, symbolic, and relational qualities. Wool, shaped by hand through felting, carries associations of warmth, care, and shelter, while the mohair locks retain a sense of movement and wildness, responding subtly to shifts in air and light. The etched kawakawa foliage grounds the work in local ecology and whakapapa, offering a quiet gesture of healing and protection, while the recycled plastic supports speak to reuse and adaptation within a fragile environment.

Suspended among the vertical lines of the pine forest, the chimes occupy a liminal threshold between the audible and the unseen. As wind activates the porcelain, sound becomes a gentle invitation—guiding bodies through space and drawing attention to what is often passed by. These chimes mark a thin place: a site where material, sound, landscape, and spirit briefly align, allowing the viewer to experience the path not only as a route to the river, but as a moment of attentiveness, listening, and pause.

This installation comprises three vertically suspended forms—two of silk and one of recycled plastic—each stained with acrylic pigment in ochre and turquoise, colours drawn from mineral earth and water. The pigments were allowed to move and settle while suspended in water, leaving traces of gravity, flow, and chance within the fabric and plastic surfaces.

Bound at both top and bottom by batons of native kauri timber, the drops are held in tension by plaited copper wire, wrapped around stones to anchor the work to the ground. Fishing spinners fixed to each baton introduce a subtle kinetic element, allowing the forms to rotate and respond to passing air. In this way, the installation remains gently animated, shifting in orientation as light and wind move through the site.

Within this body of work, these suspended drops continue an exploration of thin places—spaces of encounter where material, movement, and attention converge. The work sits between weight and weightlessness: anchored yet mobile, grounded in stone yet turning freely. As the drops slowly rotate, they offer a quiet invitation to notice the unseen forces at play, and to linger within this liminal field where earth, water, air, and spirit briefly align.