WHAKARONGO WHAKARAUPŌ
2 Jun 2023
2 Jul 2023
Festival of Sound
Whakarongo Whakaraupō uses sound to explore connections between place and people, as well as different forms of creative expression, encouraging listening in and from its Whakaraupō/Lyttelton Harbour location. The month-long group sonic art exhibition features work by Jake Kīanō Skinner, Motoko Kikkawa, Eves, Nicolas Woollaston, Helen Greenfield and Blair Parkes.
In Whakarongo Whakaraupō skilled Ōtautahi-based taonga pūoro player and musician, Jake Kīanō Skinner (Ngāti Rangitihi) presents an immersive sound installation. Using traditional Māori instruments and drawing inspiration from his Ngāti Rangitihi whakapapa, his multi-speaker work invites us to connect with the essence of Māori culture and the natural world.
Japanese-born and Ōtepoti Dunedin-resident painter and musician, Motoko Kikkawa has transformed the vibrations of her improvised music practice into a series of watercolours employing a similarly improvisational method. Seeking a harmony that overcomes the temporal limitations of music and spatial constraints of painting, this project includes work that responds to the music of Naarm Melbourne-based Eves, whose sound works accompany Kikkawa’s visual work.
Beneath seemingly simple patterns of electronic sounds, deeper connections and detail emerge in Nicolas Woollaston’s interactive sound sculpture. In this hanging work created from electronic circuits, the Ōtautahimultidisciplinary artist uses transistors to create rhythms and patterns that evoke the waves of Whakaraupō and the multigenerational memories held in the harbour.
Connecting with local history, in The Women of Lyttelton Gaol, Ōhinehou Lyttelton sound artist, Helen Greenfield, assisted by Ōtautahi musician, Blair Parkes, presents an audio work reflecting the flux of women incarcerated in Lyttelton Gaol. Originally made in 2018 in response to stories unearthed for an exhibition on the subject by Te Ūaka Lyttelton, it collages spoken details of the name, age, occupation, nationality and sentence of each inmate.
This exhibition and accompanying festival programme of free events is supported by funding from Creative Communities.