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Transcript of the 2023 Artist in Residence's video – Dion Hitchens

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[Piano music plays. Shot from the beach. Shot of sun shining through the trees. Dion starts talking in the background. Shot of Dion walking while holding his surfboard followed by another shot of him talking with the regional park in the background. Text on the screen reads Dion Hitchens Artist in Residence, Tāwharanui Regional Park]

Dion: So the residency for me was to explore a couple of ideas that I had been thinking about for a long time.

[Shot of Dion walking in the regional park towards the beach while holding his surfboard. Dion talking in the background.]

Dion: One idea was to do with the ocean as a source of inspiration, and the other idea, was reuse materials.

[Dion surfing towards the shore. Shot of Dion talking with the regional park in the background.]

Dion: I have been making art from the Rangitoto channel marker which has come from the Auckland ports.

[Shot of a truck carrying equipment. Series of shots of Dion standing on the rocks and rock pools and his visual representations. Another shot of Dion walking on the rock with his surfboard. Shot of the sea with mountains in the background.]

Dion: I have been doing visual documentation of different life forms on the rock pools and then using the channel marker to make some kinetic representation of them.

[Shot of Dion putting the buoy down on the ground.]

Dion: Using waste is, it seems like a really good idea but actually I spend my whole time trying not to make more waste in the environment.

[Shot of Dion working on his sculpture. Shot of the bach in the regional park.]

Dion: So what I have kind of learned from it is that it is actually really really difficult to reuse waste.

[Series of shots of Dion with his sculptures. Dion talking with the regional park in the background.]

Dion: I think the residency is really set up to allow people to see the parks in a different way, to experience them in a different way, to see the things that an artist might look at.

[Duration of video: 59 seconds.]