KURI BUSH #00

to the always talking sea

This project turns seaweed from Kuri Bush, south of Dunedin, New Zealand into photographs, ink marks and a speculative language.

THE PLACE

Kuri Bush is a stretch of coast just south of Ōtepoti Dunedin.
I go there often.
I walk, I look, and I pick up what the tide has already left behind.

one beach, one material

KURI BUSH #01 . kuri bush . 2026

photo: m. de hamel · hocken digital collections

WHERE THE TITLE IS COMING FROM

“the always talking sea.”

james k. baxter, “at kuri bush” (1966)

never silent.
never finished.
never read the same way twice.

who was james k. baxter?

James K. Baxter (1926–1972) is one of Aotearoa New Zealand's most important poets. He was born in Dunedin and spent his first five years on his family's farm at Kuri Bush, the same beach this project is about. The family then moved to nearby Brighton. He wrote his first poem at seven and went on to write poems, plays and essays. In his later years he lived in a community at Jerusalem (Hiruhārama) on the Whanganui River, where he took the name Hemi.

He wrote about this coast in 1966, in the poem “At Kuri Bush”. His line reminds me that any record I make is one reading of the sea. It is never the only reading.