Le Méridien Shimei Bay · Hainan, China · January 2026
A residency at Le Méridien Shimei Bay, on the coast of Hainan, in January 2026. The work that came out of it, Limen: Light and Weight, sits at a threshold, between sea and forest, exposure and immersion, clarity and density.
Along the coastline at Shimei Bay, the horizon opens outward. Light is direct, forceful, expansive. Step inland and the world closes in. The air thickens, light fragments, and space becomes layered and intimate. These works move across that boundary.
Shimei Bay gave me something rare, a place where the natural world shifts so completely, so immediately, that you cannot help but be present in it. The coastline, the forest, the mountains beyond: each one its own world. I tried to make images that carry that feeling.
The series
Rather than documenting the landscape, the images are constructed through an accumulative process: multiple exposures, digital translation and AI-assisted reconstruction. Each image is built from the experience of being there: the pressure of humidity, the instability of shifting light, the sensation of moving between environments.
Presented as a sequence, the works move between three conditions: open sea, tropical density and mountain interior. Together they describe a continuous transition, a passage through landscape where perception is constantly adjusting.
Auckland Festival of Photography · 29 May to 18 June 2026
Presented across a sequence of large-scale panels, the images are designed to be encountered in motion. As viewers move along the waterfront, the works unfold as a passage, from exposure to enclosure, from clarity to density.
The festival's theme for 2026 was Movement [Kori]. This series approaches movement not through action, but through transition. Each work sits within a shifting threshold, between environments, between states of light, between ways of seeing.
I last exhibited at the festival in 2014, with Auschwitz Revisited at the Elam School of Fine Arts, so it was good to be back.
Notes written at the time
Some work from my residency in Hainan. Two distinct bodies of work have emerged. One continues the Garden series, but in a very different register to the last, shaped by the tropical environment and a shift in pace. The other returns to the power of the sea, thinking back to the coastal series, but with a stronger sense of distance and scale. More to come.
Pleased to be selected for the Auckland Festival of Photography 2026, showing Limen: Light and Weight at this year's festival, 29 May to 18 June.
The new work was made during a residency at Le Méridien Shimei Bay, Hainan. A big shout out to them for their generosity and support.
Plant material caught in motion resolves into streaks of red and copper against dark atmospheric tones. What it was, leaf, stem or frond, matters less than what the camera has made of it. The most abstract image in the series, and perhaps the most direct expression of what Limen is about, the threshold between the visible and what lies just beyond it.
These works are shown as large-scale outdoor lightboxes, encountered in public space and not in a gallery, each one glowing from within.
Step back from the coast at Hainan and everything changes. Light, air, atmosphere. The lake sits within the frame as if held in suspension, layered exposures accumulating time within a single image. The near trees are more substantial than the distant mountain. The water holds light from a sky that has already moved on.
The only image in the series that opens out completely. The South China Sea at Shimei Bay, the horizon placed dead centre, sky and sea given equal weight. Neither dominates. After the compressed density of the tropical interior, the frame finally breathes, but the stillness here is held, balanced, not released.
The canna rises from dark ground against a deep teal sky. The striped red and gold leaves catch and hold light in a way that makes the plant appear to burn from within. The soil at the base anchors it, just. Shot in the gardens of Le Méridien Shimei Bay, it reads less like a place than a painting.
This is the garden as it might exist in memory or in sleep, forms retreating into their own darkness, colour almost entirely surrendered. Where the first image declares itself, this one withholds.
Recently I received documentation of works from the series installed as part of the Auckland Festival of Photography at Karanga Plaza on Auckland's waterfront.
Seeing the photographs translated into large-scale illuminated public works is a reminder that images continue to evolve beyond the moment of their making. Set against the night skyline and reflected across rain-soaked surfaces, the installation makes an unexpected dialogue between the work, the city and the environment around it.
Thank you to the Auckland Festival of Photography for including Limen: Light and Weight in this year's programme.
