This installation is part of a larger project called Nirun, the Thai word for eternal – a timespan that connects ancient histories and future possibilities. In it, Sorawit Songsataya collapses the distances between times and places, imagining layered relationships between materials and species, learning and loss, home and elsewhere. Ōamaru limestone pillars and basins hold beeswax and resin pools that preserve remnants of Te Waipounamu South Island ecologies – shells, dried plant matter – as well as memories from Aotearoa and Songsataya’s homeland, Thailand, contained in fruit peels, synthetic nails and eyelashes and kōwhai petals gathered near their studio. Both wax and limestone are produced through the energy of other life forms: bees, and the calcified remains of tiny organisms that have broken down over eons. As Songsataya reminds us, this landscape is teeming and shifting, and is rich with the pūrākau of takata whenua.

Geological timescales might be immense, but they can also be personal, recognising how knowledge and belonging are cyclical too – as one environment becomes more familiar, an earlier one gradually erodes.

The artist would like to thank Te Rūnanga o Ōtākou, Kāti Huirapa Rūnaka ki Puketeraki, Te Rūnanga o Moeraki and Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu for their permission and support in working with Ōamaru limestone and filming in Central Otago.

kōwhai ~ native tree with clusters of yellow flowers

pūrākau ~ myths, ancient legends, stories

takata whenua ~ Indigenous people, literally ‘people of the land’

mana whenua ~ Māori with authority over particular land or territory

kaitiaki ~ guardians

takiwā ~ district, area

kōtuku ~ rare white heron

He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil (from August 2024)