In late May, Tracey headed over to Whangarei in Northlands Aotearoa to work with partners AwhiWorld on the continuing collaboration with Treecreate.
While Tracey was there, AwhiWorld and ThoTho facilitated the #Bios occupation of the Whangarei Art Museum for three weeks as part of the #Awhiincubator project.
It was a very rich time, spent working on cyanotypes, video projections and some new augmented reality works and exploring the Mangroves along the shoreline on long morning walks with AwhiWorld director Dr Maggie Buxton.
As part of the collaboration, making connections between Yarun and Whangarei’s ecosystem has been a constant theme, seeking to understand the differences and similarities, particularly around native and invasive plants and animals.
For example, there are 8 Mangrove species in Moreton Bay, all of which are protected. In contrast, there is only one species in Northlands and it is only protected in designated areas. The topic of Mangroves spurred some wonderful experimentation by ThoTho in harvesting and creating some Mangrove dye from their local creek, where they are growing in abundance.
Part of Tracey’s work involved dyeing fabric with cyanotype sun prints of plants from Yarun and Whangarei. This also provided an opportunity to experiment in the #Bios space with the work with other artists. In the pictures below Tracey Willms Deane and Sharyne Lewis play with the fabric with projected images in #Bios.
Tracey also created some video projection work for #Bios which is part of this evolving project between Treecreate and AwhiWorld.
There were also some amazing presentations happening as part of Bios. Professor Frances Joseph and her postgraduate students delivered a series of seminars (Grow Your Leather, Recycle and 3D Print Plastic Waste, Make Bio Plastic) as well as a workshop introducing community partners from the Awhi Incubator project to E-Textiles.
Below are a few moments captured over the time in Whangarei with Awhiworld. We look forward to seeing how our collaboration develops with Kim Newall and Maggie Buxton participating in Weaving Waters @ Yarun later this year.
Treecreate 