Everything Rises (2020)

"Everything Rises responds to the night skies, the rising moon, rising tides, fire and climate emergency. The documented public performance involved 38 participants in an artist lead live installation, walking together along Auckland’s Takapuna Beach; a performance walk in the Urban Walking Festival curated by Melissa Laing.

Participants stepped into the incoming tide under the rising full moon. Everything Rises was a peaceful immersive sea walk; an exploration of the elements in formation. The walk was also a tracing of the rising tide with a glowing line of solar lights carried by participants – the people carrying light; a navigation of stars fallen to the land, carried into the sea towards the pull of the rising moon, before the majestic form of Rangitoto rising from the seas of te Waitemata.

Seven intersecting burning clips, one for each of the seven key Matariki stars, were filmed just after dusk under a rising full moon. With the focus on the moonrise during the intertidal walk connecting dialogues of Maramataka, Puanga and Matariki. Each burning clip emulates a bright fiery Matariki star alight in a dark void, evoking complex visual dialogues relating to burning; purification, a world in turmoil, changing weather patterns, forest fires, rising tides, te Marama, the greater galaxy and our connection to the life path of stars, Papatuanuku and nature’s rhythms.

For the first time in my career I have experimented with composing a score of twinkling, walking rising piano to accompany the atmospheric sounds of footsteps, sea and fire."