Installation artist Jude Robertson is to be the 2018 Auckland regional parks artist in residence. Jude creates art using sound, sculpture and photography.
Much of her previous work explores people’s relationship with their environment and examines ideas around location, terrain and mapping.
During her stay at Waharau Regional Park she will create a sonic map of the park. She’ll collage the sounds of people, plants, animals and the weather. She is also interested in recording bodies of water within the park. This curation of sounds will reflect the nature of Waharau.
Jude’s mission is to reveal the multi-layered meanings embedded within a place and to encourage people to listen and tune into the park in a new way. She is particularly interested in using sound to trigger memories.
"Memories connect us to people and root us to place,” she says.
Councillor Alf Filipaina, Deputy Chair of Auckland Council’s Environment and Community Committee, says, “Jude’s skillset, expertise in multiple media and interests make her an ideal candidate for this residency.
“I look forward to seeing how her art takes shape during her time at Waharau Regional Park and how it will draw attention to the subtle, often overlooked aspects of the park.”
Early in her residency, around November 2018, Jude will invite park visitors and volunteers to be a part of her soundscape and may offer a workshop which incorporates a soundwalk around the park.
Although she is the 14th artist to take up a regional park’s residency, she is the only one to focus on the sites and sounds of Waharau Regional Park.
Living and working at Waharau for eight weeks will enable her to collect audible nature by day and night and she plans to completely immerse herself in her temporary home away from home.
More information about Jude
Jude is artistically accomplished but is also technically meticulous – a necessary trait for audio recording, sculpture-making and producing high-quality photographs.
Her career highlights include winning university scholarships to attend symposiums in New York and Singapore.
Find out more about the residency
The Artist in Residence Programme enables an artist to live and work in one of our regional parks. In return for accommodation and a fee towards materials, we use the original, insightful and site-specific art works to help us interpret and promote regional parks.
The work artists create is shared with the public on and off site, during or after the residency, in exhibitions, workshops, artist talks, performances, concerts or publications.
Artists interact with park visitors while in residence and sometimes become park advocates.
Visitors get to encounter art outside of white-walled galleries and discover aspects of the park that are often overlooked.
An unusual feature of this residency is that it moves each year so new and original work is generated from different parks and places.
Regional Parks have hosted artists working in many media. Residents have included a poet, a jeweller, a sculptor and a composer as well as painters, photographers and filmmakers.
To see some previous projects, watch these short videos.
