‘Busy hands and a free mind’: Collaborative workshops and artistic practice in Oceania

This article considers three contemporary art installations that were made during public workshops, in which volunteers helped to construct the final art piece. Quandamooka artist Megan Cope’s Whispers (2023) was a monumental installation at the Sydney Opera House made of thousands of oyster shells cleaned and prepared by volunteers across the city. The recurring installation Bottled Ocean (2014–present), by Māori artist George Nuku (Ngāti Kahunguna and Ngāti Tūwharetoa), sources its materials from plastic waste donated by local communities where the piece is exhibited and the host institutions held numerous workshops in which those same communities transformed their waste into vivid marine creatures. To make the permanent installation Hulali i ka lā (2016) at the Prince Waikiki Resort in Honolulu, Kanaka Maoli artist Kaili Chun invited the hotel’s employees to contribute to a school of metal fish swimming towards the ocean just outside. Each of these installations engages with ecological issues facing marine ecosystems in Oceania. Putting art historical frameworks of collaboration and participatory praxis into conversation with climate justice discourses about coalitions and alliance-building, this article argues that these case studies form critical relationships not just between different people but also between people and their environments.