Ashburton Art Gallery November 2015 – January 2016

This collaboration with acclaimed poet Bernadette Hall explored the history and geology of Katiki Beach and Shag Point/ Matakaea, near Moeraki on the East Coast near Palmerston South. The fossilised remains of a Plesiosaur was found there in the 1980’s and was removed in secret to Otago University and then to the Museum where it can be seen in the Southern Lands Southern People display. I responded to this form because of its glamour, and its links with issues of climate change today. The use of fossil fuels is leading to, or at any rate contributing to, our own possible extinction… And it died there 70 million years ago, when Aotearoa NZ wasn’t even where it is now. I loved the sheer scale of time.