No Trace 2025

This installation began as a performance. I crushed coal by hand, and audience members were invited to walk a length of paper. Leaving their mark on top of hand-painted skink footprints. What remained was a roll of paper covered in coal dust. Destruction ends where it lifts towards the sky. On the outskirts of Reefton in Te Tai Poutini sits The Alborn Mine, opened in the early 1900s by my great-great-grandfather Victor Alborn. My family burrowed into the land, extracting coal and unknowingly disturbing the creatures that lived beneath it. This coal mining history ended in 1966 after a sudden flood took the life of William James Cooper. Years later, in 1992, scientists Tony Whitaker and Mike Meads discovered a small lizard living amongst the rusting remains of the former mine. "The Alborn Skink" is one of the rarest lizards on earth. Fewer than thirty are thought to survive, their existence threatened by mice and vandalism of their small and fragile habitat. A predator-free fence is currently being built to protect them, supported by ongoing fundraising and the Department of Conservation. This work aims to contribute to these efforts. A family that once took from the land now tries to care for what remains. No Trace asks how we live with the marks we make, and if we might learn to see what lives in our shadow.