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Kermadec – Nine artists explore the South Pacific

Kermadec – Nine artists explore the South Pacific was the first in a series of exhibitions of environmentally inspired artwork produced by nine artists after a voyage through the Kermadec region.

Chile & Aotearoa New Zealand

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Kermadec. Promotional material 2012

Kermadec – Nine artists explore the South Pacific presented a series of exhibitions which toured throughout New Zealand. The group included New Zealand painter Robin White, celebrated Australian contemporary artist Fiona Hall, and Gregory O'Brien, poet, artist and curator of Kermadec. They were joined by sculptor Elizabeth Thomson, John Reynolds, photographers Jason O'Hara and Bruce Foster, printmaker and novelist John Pule and inter-media artist extraordinaire Phil Dadson.

In May 2011, the artists took part on a one-week voyage on the HMNZS Otago, leaving from Devonport Naval Base, Auckland, and travelling north through the Kermadec region to the Kingdom of Tonga. They were selected because their ancestry, upbringing or art connects them to the Pacific. The voyage gave them the chance to see one of the world’s last remaining near-pristine ocean sites.

The voyage was arranged and funded by the Pew Environment Group, which was advocating for the Kermadec region to be a marine reserve, due to its unique location and diverse species. In Rapa Nui (Easter Island) the artists met Madame Piru, who has been picking up debris from the shores for over 20 years. She showed them a hundred square meters of plastic garbage she had collected in the past week.

Immediately after the voyage, and for several years afterwards, the artists were inspired to use their experiences to express, through art, how humans are affecting the natural environment in the Kermadec region. Their artwork used a range of media including video, tapa-making, painting, photography, etching, film, sound-recording and poetry.

In November 2011, the large-scale exhibition Kermadec – Nine artists explore the South Pacific was shown in Tauranga, Wellington and Auckland, before it was displayed at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Santiago, Chile. The exhibition shows how contemporary art can engage with, and raise issues about, the environment. Over 50,000 people in New Zealand saw Kermadec – Nine artists explore the South Pacific. It reached not only a fine-arts audience, but also people interested in the environment, and cultural and maritime history.

Between 2012 and 2016, smaller versions of the exhibition, called Kermadec - Lines in the Ocean and Kermadec - Expeditions and Connections, toured New Zealand, Rapa Nui, Chile, Tonga and New Caledonia. These exhibitions featured many of the same videos, photographs and etchings, plus work completed by the artists since Kermadec – Nine artists explore the South Pacific. When the exhibition reached Rapa Nui in July 2012, it was displayed in a school hall that was painted by the children and decorated by the local community. Hundreds of people from Rapa Nui came to see it. Four of the participating artists had travelled with the exhibition and painted a mural outside the school hall and friezes inside the building.

The artists, and their contributions to the exhibitions, have been profiled in the book Kermadec: Art Across the Pacific, which was published in 2013.

In September 2015, New Zealand’s then prime minister, John Key, announced at the United Nations General Assembly that the New Zealand Government planned to create a 620,000-square-kilometre ocean sanctuary to protect the Kermadec region.

Published 02 November 2023