The Poetics of Place. 10th Nov – 21st Dec 2026
CURRRICULUM VITAE: TRACEY SULLIVAN
Practicing Visual Artist, Poet, & Creative Educator
Instagram: @_traceysullivan_
Minor Solo Exhibitions:
A Haiga Tide Upcycle Redesign Store, December 2025 – January 2026
Cloud Stories From Out of the Blue Studio and Gallery, Opunake, June-July 2024
Small Islands of Meaning, Upcycle Redesign Store, October – November 2023
Shared Exhibitions:
(upcoming: how we come home: re-storying the wasteland, Te Whare Taonga o Waiheke Waiheke Art Gallery June-July 2027)
Atawhai Whenua and what else I see from here Te Whare Taonga o Waiheke Waiheke
Community Art Gallery, September 8 – October 22, 2023 (with Julia Holden)
Group Shows:
(upcoming: the poetics of place – From Out of the Blue Studio and Gallery, Opunake November – December 2026 (with Lynn Taylor and Julie Coffey)
Word The Upstairs Gallery, Titirangi, May 8-31, 2026
Surface Te Whare Taonga o Waiheke Waiheke Art Gallery February 6 – March 22, 2026
Represent Group Exhibition, Studio Ten81, Waiheke Island July – August 2025
Understory Group Exhibition, Te Whare Taonga o Waiheke Waiheke Community Art Gallery March -May 2025
The Beach 2025 Summer Exhibition, From Out of the Blue Studio and Gallery, Opunake, January 2025
Works from the Stockroom Te Whare Taonga o Waiheke Waiheke Community Art Gallery
23 August – 13 October 2024
Kings College Art Exhibition, Auckland, October 2023 (and October 2022)
Wai-Rua-Ono-Rua Waitangi Day Exhibition, Te Whare Taonga o Waiheke Waiheke
Community Art Gallery, February 22 – March 19 2023
Craigs Aspiring Art Prize, Wanaka, January 2023, 2024
Ka Poipoia – Nurture – Matariki Exhibition, Te Whare Taonga o Waiheke Waiheke
Community Art Gallery, July 13 – August 14, 2022
The Upstairs Gallery Emerging Artist Award, Lopdell House, Titirangi, Auckland
(Finalist) October 14, 2022
Our Night World, Te Whare Taonga o Waiheke Waiheke Community Art Gallery,
June 22-July 3, 2022
Installations:
Gallery Anomalous, Surfdale, Waiheke Island Matariki Installation June 2024
Residencies:
From Out of the Blue Studio and Gallery, Opunake, Taranaki, New Zealand June – July 2024
Placed:
Changing Threads Contemporary New Zealand Textile Fibre Arts Awards Award of Excellence 2024
Takahe, Monica Taylor Poetry Prize Runner up 2023
New Zealand Poetry Society Competition 2014
Community Projects:
This Island is Full of Voices Poetry II Aug
Poetry on the Pavement, New Zealand National Poetry Day, Waiheke Island – August 2024, 2025, 2026
The Waiheke 100 Day Project and Exhibition, February – June 2023, 2024
The Postcard Project – Lockdown 2021 – Waiheke Island
Poetry Line – Lockdown 2020 – Waiheke Island
This Island is Full of Voices – poetry workshop – National Poetry Day Project – Waiheke
Island, 2017
Over Land and Sea – National Poetry Day project – Den Haag, NL 2016
Publications:
a place on earth, tracey sullivan Math Paper Press, Singapore, 2012
Various Literary Journals and Anthologies: 2009 –
Radio in the Netherlands
Artist Bio
I am a Waiheke Island based poet and visual artist. Broadly, my creative practice is concerned with the poetics of place. By this I mean that through a combination of text/language and visual image I am exploring the ways in which physical spaces—landscapes, home, environments—shape human identity emotions and memory. There is a focus on how places are felt, experienced and charged with meaning rather than on geographical concepts and landscapes, or descriptions of them.
For the most part, the work that I have shown over the past few years has been visually distinctive—hand-stitching over darkly over-painted vintage book pages, often atlases. In these works, materials, techniques and methodology are consciously and purposefully chosen. The atlases are in many ways anachronisms, the dictionaries also. The novels destined for landfill. All of these papers are re-purposed and re-valued. There is an environmentally protective sensibility, but equally they are used for their capacity as carriers of journey, human touch, distance, memories and story, even before they come into my hands and process.
Stitching, and particularly hand-stitching is also something of an anachronism—time consuming, and imperfect, visibly made by hands. However, it also has a long subversive feminist history and presence. Conceptually, through undervalued ‘women’s’ work and making visible/audible unvalued and marginalised voices, from historical samplers and quilts to notable contemporary artists such as Tracey Emin, and Louise Bourgeois to whom both stitch and language were profoundly important.
The language in my work is my own. Whether phrases, short haiku-style poems or excerpts from longer poems. The word and image combinations are intended to be complementary rather than explanatory, descriptive or illustrative. At best, together they may offer a leap in meaning, or a different perspective.
The Poetics of Place – Exhibition Statement:
Using the poem how we come home (below) as the starting point for imagery, these works explore our relationship with place, transition and ideas of ‘home.’
Land, sea, cloud, stones, lighthouses and house shapes, are motifs that run throughout my wider practice. Here they appear in stitch, collage and the literal shape of the boards.
The same human figure is repeated in a number of the works as it moves through different landscapes and spaces. The figure is truncated. It is stationary for the moment in a place. At times the land and sea run through the figure. At times the figure appears anchored in place, at times floating, at times literally at sea.
In some works the asymmetrical house shapes are layered indicating the iterative and evolving process of coming home. In some works it is difficult to tell whether the figure is inside or outside the house.
Elements of other places and lives in the form of maps, text and image come together in one place. All the papers used are vintage. They come with their own histories and stories to tell. After all, we carry remnants and torn fragments and the shadowy memories of other places with us as we move, as we settle, as we live our ongoing life and the continuing process of coming home.
how we come home
slowly
in pieces
with stones in our pockets
alone
how we come home
to whispered stories
of second sons and
women born to hardship
how we come home
by sea-light
I carry
my children’s milk teeth
with me
and we wake to green
how we come home
to variegated bush
and petalled sunlight
the lancewood raises its arms
how we come home
to sunlight cracking
open other days —
to bird-flit
at chest height:
piwakawaka
how we come home
trailing limbs,
language,
a heart
tangled,
together
*
as we barrow
what we value most
up the zigzag path
and into the light
Artist in The Beach 2025.
We are delighted to have a body of works from tracey about her relationship with the beach. Being resident on Waiheke Island, and being an avid swimmer tracey brings a very intimate view of this relationship to the exhibition.
The works in The Beach have all been based around a series of tracey’s poems which she has created as written expressions and then translated phrases and essences into her distinctive visual works. Here are the poems.
On Taranaki Time
When I came
I wanted something
from the place
but the land said,
this is how I will hold you:
with my deep shadows
and glancing light —
go talk to that mountain, listen to the conversations
between the wind & the sea
see the rubble
of violent eruption
smoothed over—
rounded and green now
with a few broken trees
and the rivers
running
tea-coloured
after rain.
Walk through old bush
bearded with moss,
feel the chill of the rock,
once red hot,
rise up through your boots,
and a lazy SE wind
cut right through you.
This land pulls no punches,
it couldn’t give a damn.
You can stay, you can listen, you can talk
you can do what you like,
while the mountain sleeps
and the sea grumbles and roars.
The second poem is
The Island
My waka
tipped me out
here,
hair
dripping
by sea-light,
where briny and buckled
hill shadows
wrap
the shore.
The bay water
is inky and metallic,
then syrupy
under the moon.
Rays glide —
invisible protectors,
te wero wero crouches,
stands strong.
*
It will be a zig-zag
path up,
on patient
sublunary legs,
from a tideline
scattered
with driftwood
and broken glass,
it will be a crunching
and breaking down
path, slippery
as leaf mold decays
and nourishes,
quiet
and sometimes steep
in dappled darkness:
not knowing
knowing
not knowing
coming home.
The third poem is:
Grace goes South
After sunshiny months of quiet,
afloat on the hillside
with the doors flung wide, the ups and downs
of the headland paths with open beaches
and silences, and talk that ranges, ranges
across hemispheres and hearts, where sea is a place
not a boundary marker,
and we start our days in it—
and watch the garden grow take care with water
and each other
and the crunch of the path
says welcoming, comfortable things. Then Grace goes South &
tears come in
like a broaching sea
sideways, unexpected a little unbalancing—
the deck tips.
where sea is a place
not a boundary marker,
and we start our days in it—
where sea is a place
not a boundary marker,
and we start our days in it—
where sea is a place
not a boundary marker,
and we start our days in it—
where sea is a place
not a boundary marker,
and we start our days in it—
the poem tender is also used in her small book works
tender
you arrive in the bay
when the tide is out
at a low ebb, not like you
anyway,
let me be your tender —
let me bring what I can
in small loads,
push out hard over the muddy regions
watching for the sharp bits, the broken shell and rock in the silty sand
let me bring soft packages,
tied in oil cloth with string—
salt, a handstitched comforter, flask of broth —
let me bring the cool back of my hand to your forehead,
while you sleep
let me row out
under blue skies, light playing
on the lips of the sea
or at night, when cloud
scuds across the broad face of the moon
anyway,
let me not stay away
let me be your tender
this poem is called landfall
landfall
wading to the edge
of displaced sleep
I find you there,
tall saint
blue eyed
kneeling in the sand.
under the curved sky
of a misplaced dream
snow crystals melt
in the tread of your boots
mountain light
still tangled in your hair
mouth full of promise
heart in a box
Here is a slide show of her works for this exhibition. Full label info is with the work on the gallery webshop page.
Artist Residency 12th June – 15th July 2024.
It will be a new kind of residency for our studio gallery to be welcoming tracey sullivan. tracey is primarily a poet, writer but is developing an increasing body of works expressing this poetry in textile expressions. Currently based on Waiheke Island tracey is looking forward to being on a different size of island while in Ōpunakē. The following is from tracey’s application for her residency.
I am a poet, visual artist and creative educator. I have recently completed a Master of Creative Writing (poetry) through Massey University and my first exhibition opened on September 8, 2023, at Te Whare Taonga o Waiheke Waiheke Community Art Gallery. This exhibition is titled “Atawhai Whenua and what else I see from here.” It reflects a number of aspects of my art practice relevant to the residency, including interests in place, the more than human environment, and conceptions of home, the use of salvaged/upcycled materials, text, paper and thread and an emphasis on slow processes made by hands. The title of the exhibition relates to the eponymous poem and the Atawhai Whenua Reserve whose everchanging beauty I wake to every morning and run or walk in most days. I have attached below the artist statement specific to this exhibition, but which is also reflective of my broader interests.
My poetry and visual art practices are closely related. They feed each other. There is almost always text involved in the visual works. In terms of the residency, I would like to explore and expand the use of liquid paper and papermaking techniques (see images below) alongside the development of my current practice. As I have a strong interest in ‘place,’ I believe the influence of relocation from a small island to a coastal situation with mountain, bush and sea will be reflected in the work produced. The residency would be a wonderful opportunity for me to work in a concentrated way and in a dedicated space in what appears to be a thriving creative environment and community.
Before I began exhibiting 2022, I had convinced Upcycle, the local recycle design store, to carry my chapbook of poetry, a place on earth. They agreed, but in turn encouraged me to do something more visual with my writing. From this grew one-poem books, blackout poetry and the beginning of the stitched works I currently make.
This recent Stuff article gives a bit of an overview of who and where I am:
https://www.thepost.co.nz/a/home-property/350053485/waiheke-artist-tracey-sullivan- renegotiating-her-relationship-new-zealand
CURRRICULUM VITAE: TRACEY SULLIVAN
EDUCATION:
University of Canterbury
Bachelor of Arts (English Literature) 1987
Christchurch College of Education Diploma of Teaching (Secondary) 1990
The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand Certificate of Study – Print Media Skills 1998
Whitireia Polytechnic
Modules in poetry and short fiction as part of the Creative Writing programme 2006
Chek Institute, Denmark
Certificate of Nutrition and Lifestyle Coaching 2009
Whitireia Polytechnic Diploma of Publishing 2017
Massey University
Master of Creative Writing – Poetry 2023
CURRENT AND MOST RECENT AND RELEVANT EMPLOYMENT:
Tutor – Waiheke Adult Learning Centre – ongoing classes in creative writing and art, regular workshop series at the intersection of creativity and wellbeing e.g. Creative Writing, Start the Week Right, Introduction to The Artists Way.
Practicing Visual Artist – mixed media, text driven. Work shown and sold throughout New Zealand.
Poetry and Short Fiction Editor – Math Paper Press, independent literary press, Singapore
PUBLICATIONS:
a place on earth, tracey sullivan Math Paper Press, Singapore, 2012
Literary Journals and Anthologies: Six Cents, Issue 2, 2021
A Vase and a Vast Sea
ed. Jenny Nimon Escalator Press, 2020
Jaam 32
Summer 2014/2015 New Zealand
New Zealand Poetry Society Anthology 2014 New Zealand.
Poems in the Waiting Room Autumn 2014 New Zealand.
Potroast #10 2012 New Zealand.
Crest to Crest
Impressions of Canterbury – prose and poetry ed. Karen Zelas Wily Publications, 2009
New Zealand
My poetry can also be found online at:
Tuesday Poem featured poet: http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.nl/2014/07/news-from-island-by-tracey- sullivan_22.html
Blackmail Press
http://nzpoetsonline.homestead.com/Index32.html http://nzpoetsonline.homestead.com/Index33.html
4th Floor Literary Journal
2005/2006 http://www.whitireia.ac.nz/4thfloor/default.html
The British Council online writing community 2012 Singpapore http://civiclife.sg/writingthecity/
AWARDED:
New Zealand Society of Authors Mentorship 2013
PLACED:
New Zealand Poetry Society Competition 2014
Other:
my poetry has been read on radio in the Netherlands.
SHARED EXHIBITION:
“Atawhai Whenua and what else I see from here,” Te Whare Taonga o Waiheke Waiheke Community Art Gallery, September 8 – October 22, 2023 (with Julia Holden)
INVITED, SELECTED, SHORTLISTED GROUP SHOWS AND AWARDS: Kings College Art Exhibition, Auckland, October 2023 (and October 2022)
Wai-Rua-Ono-Rua, Waitangi Day Exhibition, Te Whare Taonga o Waiheke Waiheke Community Art Gallery, February 22 – March 19 2023
Craigs Aspiring Art Prize, Wanaka, January 2023
Ka Poipoia – Nurture – Matariki Exhibition, Te Whare Taonga o Waiheke Waiheke Community Art Gallery, July 13 – August 14, 2022
The Upstairs Gallery Emerging Artist Award, Lopdell House, Titirangi, Auckland (Finalist) October 14, 2022
Our Night World, Te Whare Taonga o Waiheke Waiheke Community Art Gallery, June 22 -July 3, 2022
COMMUNITY PROJECTS:
The Postcard Project – Lockdown 2021 – Waiheke Island
Poetry Line – Lockdown 2020 – Waiheke Island
This Island is Full of Voices – poetry workshop – National Poetry Day Project – Waiheke Island, 2017
Over Land and Sea – National Poetry Day project – Den Haag, 2016
We are excited to be hosting tracey as an Artist in Residence. If you want to reach out to tracey here is her instagram link:
Instagram: _traceysullivan_ & iamthecrow