Bloom | Te Awaroa Exhibition | Art Kaipara

Bloom is a series of four small Fascinariums responding to the Kaipara, a place of abundance and growing fragility.

Each work brings together foraged shells with hand-formed glass inclusions, sealed beneath blown glass domes. The shells carry their own histories, once living bodies, now remnants shaped by tide and time. The glass elements act as speculative growths, blooms that appear luminous and seductive, yet sit uneasily within their hosts.

The title references algal blooms that increasingly render Kaipara shellfish unsafe to eat. Pollution, sedimentation, and intensive land use have compromised the harbour’s ability to sustain what its name promises. These works hold that irony, beauty paired with toxicity, preservation alongside loss.

Encased like scientific specimens or devotional relics, the Fascinariums invite close looking. They ask what we choose to protect, what we alter beyond repair, and how human intervention reshapes ecosystems in ways that are often invisible until it is too late.

Te Awaroa | Helensville Art Gallery
4 - 28 February, 2026