Illuminated Horizons
2026
When
Words Are Not Enough
Christian Jensen
(poet/artist)
Adam Colegrove
(poet/musician)
Auspicious Studios
(visuals)
Demi Urges is Christian Jensen, performing as Zin Uru, and Adam Colegrove, performing as Zin Ardal — an established Wordcore band, with both artists performing together as poets. Christian works as visual composer for the piece and Adam as musical composer. The duo is collaborating with Auspicious Studios to build a fully immersive visual experience around the work.
When Words Are Not Enough is spoken word set within music and theatre, built to draw the audience into the work rather than have them watch from outside. It moves through the idea of the sublime — that space between standing in the ground of reality and stepping into hope and dreaming — and follows red threads that run between people, ideas and opinions, connecting things that don't always agree with each other. It sits with the tension of being and becoming, and the way we build our own mental sanctuaries — here, a golden castle on a floating island — borrowing from fairytale and myth to say something true about the present. At its centre is a modern ritual: one the audience is invited to take part in, not just watch.
Christian Jensen (Zin Uru)
Christian is a poet, performance artist and curator who has worked in Tāmaki Makaurau's spoken word scene for close to two decades. He was creative director of The Literatti and MC'd Poetry Live from 2006–2012. In 2009 he founded the Metonymy Project, pairing poets with visual artists for six-week collaborative "blind dates," which by its 2011 exhibition had grown to over 100 submissions and 16 exhibited works. He has continued this thread through installation and object art, showing work through the Silo exhibitions alongside Lower Bar Collective. His practice includes an ongoing series of cartoon-like drawings of Zin Uru, drawing inspiration from physical theatre and installation artwork, in the vein of groups like Red Mole.
Adam Colegrove (Zin Ardal)
Adam is a musician and vocalist with a long history performing and recording across bands including Flout, C2 and God's Orphan. When Words Are Not Enough marks a new step in his practice — the first time he's stepped fully into his own right as a vocalist and poet, not just a musician, in a true collaboration between two equal artists.
Auspicious Studios
Ho Min and Darryl Chin bring motion-capture and generative visuals that respond live to movement and sound, extending Demi Urges' ritual into an intermedia performance where image, body and voice move as one system
LBC
and Caitlin Smith
Lower Bar Collective build music from the ground up, improvising through layers of effects until soundscapes emerge - evocative, unsettled things that live on the edge of noise, soundtrack, and music, resisting anything more traditional.
Collaboration sits at the heart of what they do: they seek out other artists,
musical, visual and poetic, to think alongside, and they seek out spaces that talk back - concrete silos, tunnels, churches, art galleries, the open air - letting each room shape what the music becomes.
For Illuminated Horizons, that collaborative instinct turns to Caitlin Smith - a renowned jazz and soul vocalist, songwriter and poet whose own practice thrives on improvisation.
Together, the band improvises music live around her words as they unfold in real time - sound and voice finding each other on stage, shaped by the moment rather than fixed in advance. It's a performance built entirely in the room, in front of the audience, true to the way both LBC and Caitlin love to work: listening
closely, responding instinctively, and letting the space itself become part of the piece.
The pair's earlier collaboration, Silo'd - recorded inside Silo 6 at Silo Park - will be available on the night for anyone wanting
to take a piece of it home.
Lower Bar Collective is Malcolm Dunn, Rob Morgan and Matt Findlay, joined for this performance by poet and singer Caitlin Smith.
https://linktr.ee/lbcworld
https://www.caitlinsmith.com/
https://www.facebook.com/caitlinsmithjazz
Midway through the show, step into an immersive installation and exhibition — meet the artists and lose yourself in impact storytelling. This year's exhibition is curated by Yellow Lamp Poetry (Ash Raymond James) and Blackout Poetry (Hebe Kearney), alongside further installation work from the participating trios and bands
Blackout Poetry Aotearoa and Yellow Lamp Poetry present: ‘Maybe it’s Not So Bad After All’, an immersive exhibition that invites you to embrace the parts of darkness that let the light in. Building on previous exhibitions ‘Blackout in the Dark’ and ‘Between Life and Death’, we will be turning the lights out, handing you a torch, and encouraging you to discover poetry in physical space. Don’t expect sunshine and rainbows – this exhibition is about how we hold sorrows and joys simultaneously, and focuses on the weird little things that keep us all reaching for tomorrow.
Auspicious Studios
yung Ho Min and Darryl Chin brings motion capture and visuals working with the 3 wordcore bands for a unqiue intermedia and immersive performance.
Dreaming
of
Blue
Lola Elvy
(poet),
John Goudge
(musician)
Ronald Andreassend
(artist).
Dreaming of Blue brings together the seasoned talents of three arts professionals. They weave a dreamscape of words, music and art, expressing hope and loss, and a desire to find a place to call home.
Lola Elvy
Lola works in arts, advocacy and education, and has a background in music and mathematics.
She is interested in art as a form of knowledge communication—with the capacity to prompt an informed, emotional responses in a diverse audience. She believes this to be vital in an age of artificial intelligence and anti-information.
Recent projects include poetry exhibits and performances, works for orchestra, sound installations, and community initiatives such as The Conversation Project 2026.
John Goudge
John Goudge is a musician, composer, theatre practitioner and tutor.
His music usually tells a story, ranging from sweet guitar ballads to deep house and world-fusion music.
In West Auckland he trains others to be performers at his drama school and music studio, as well as directing theatre shows, and working with intellectually disabled actors.
In 2022 John’s one-man show at Pitt St Theatre, The John Show, picked up an ‘Honourable Mention’ at Auckland Fringe for outstanding ‘music and theatre performance.’
Ronald Andreassend
Ronald’s creative career spans 46 years, fusing the boundaries between art, craft, design and politics.
His work reveals a diversity of inspiration - culture, family stories, faith, memories, politics, social inequity, gang whānau and experimentations. The result is a prolific swathe of artworks, homewares, installations, workshops and lighting, as well as objects that have no reason except to amuse, intrigue or challenge.
#1 Moebius Orchestra
Matt Reece, Gerhard Lottermoser, with poets Loki Smythe and Peter Rimmer
Poetry on Masi
Daren Kamali
(Poet/Visual Artist)
Levani Vosasi
(Percussionist)
Joana Monolagi
(Visual Artist)
Visual art and poetry on Masi (Fijian Tapa) scroll by Daren Kamali and Joana Monolagi: To be read out loud performance from the Masi scroll by DKpoet with Levani Vosasi on percussion-drum.
Joana Monolagi: "It fascinated me to watch and grow up with all these things – weaving, printing, mending and knotting."
Monolagi was born in Ba - Serua Province. She moved to New Zealand in the mid to late 1970s. In 1990 she began to learn how to weave and print masi (barkcloth), teaching herself from memories she had of watching women in Fiji make the cloth when she was younger.
Joana Monolagi is part of a research project titled The Ulumate Project: Sacredness of Human Hair with Daren Kamali and Ole Maiava. The research investigates the iTaukei / Fijian custom of wig ceremonies in times of mourning. Monolagi recreated a wig from the hair of Kamali, and the three of them presented and talked about their project over 2022.
Daren Kamali: multidisciplinary artist, poet and musician, Fijian – Wallis – Futunan – Scottish descent.
Kamali has Viti (Fiji), family, friends and Moana Nui a Kiwa (sea of islands) at the heart of all his writing and creations.
2026:
Director of Melanesian Arts Development Initiatives for Creative NZ in Aotrearoa NZ (2025-2026). Working to publish fourth collection of poems, I Am Not Your Coconut.
Judge (Convener) Mary and Peter Biggs Poetry award at the Oakham Book Awards 2026; Co-edited several other anthologies since 2019. 2022 Creative NZ Pacific Heritage Arts Award in Aotearoa NZ; 2016: Completed a master’s degree in Creative Writing (A class honours) at University of Auckland. 2014 - International Writers Program at University of Iowa, USA. 2012: Pacific Writer in Residence at University of Hawai’I in 2012;
Participated at the Festival of Pacific Arts, Palau (2004); Honiara, Solomon Islands (2012) and Hawai’i (2024). Since 2000: International and local literary/music Festivals in AotearoaNZ, Australia, Singapore, London, Hawai’i, United States, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Cook Islands, Tahiti, Palau, Micronesia, Ukraine, and Dubai since 2000.
Levani Vosasi aka Love Vision
Was born and raised with creativity in his bones and passion in his veins in the isles of smiles. Levani arrived in Aotearoa in 1985 via Sigatoka/Raiwaqa - Suva Fiji as part of the Fijian Belle Company.
Danced with Mau Dance Company in Aotearoa NZ in the late 80’s and moved on to Congo and Bongo drums and percussion sounds in the 90’s, jamming with national and international bands like UB40, Baba Maal, Jamoa Jam, Three Houses Down, and House, to name a few. He plays all genres of music but well known for his support for House Music DJs and Partys in NZ during the 90’s and 2000’s.
