Suspended iceberg features in Nelson Arts Festival

A 2.7-tonne iceberg suspended above Port Nelson will provide a platform for artists and those watching below, grappling with the ever-changing climate as the ice melts beneath into the ocean.

It is the international premiere of THAW, a production from Sydney-based physical theatre company Legs On The Wall, and a feature in this year's Nelson Arts Festival line-up, on show at Port Nelson on Labour Day.

This year marks the first full-scale arts festival for Whakatū since 2019, as the Covid-19 pandemic meant most festival shows in 2020 and 2021 were cancelled.

Legs On The Wall artistic director Joshua Thomson said THAW was part art installation, part activism, and inspired by his reaction to the decline of the natural world and the ever eroding nature of humans' engagement with it.

The work is performed by three different characters over eight hours.

Thomson said it took a number of years of engineering and testing to bring the concept to life.

"It does sort of show you this idea of loneliness and isolation out there, but it also shows you that there's something worth fighting for and there's something left even though it's changed from what it was."

The show's message was clear, he said.

"It's the symbiosis between us as animals, the natural world and how we rely on it, it's represented in the work as a shelf that the performer needs and as it gets smaller and smaller, it gets harder and harder for them."

Nelson Arts Festival executive and artistic director Lydia Zanetti said it was a coup to bring a show of THAW's scale to the region for people.

The Ko Te Ākau installation curated by arts laureate Charles Koroneho at Refinery Artspace, which would run for the duration of the festival, was also an important body of work, Zanetti said.

It references the work of artists Ralph Hotere and Bill Culbert and provides inspiration for the poetics of Te Ākau, the space where the ocean meets the land, where the horizon connects land, water and sky.

It was specially comissioned for the festival and enabled the artists to experience the festival alongside guests.

Zanetti said it was also the first time the festival had been run using a Pay What You Can system, with tickets anywhere between $9 and $95 for different shows.

Each show had a recommended price - which is what would traditionally be charged for tickets - and any amount paid over this subsidised the cheaper tickets, in a bid to make the festival accessible to all.

"It's really important for us that this is a festival for and with Whakatū Nelson, so it's really about reflecting the community and having the kind of conversations that this community wants to be having," Zanetti said.

The festival would give people the ability to connect through shared experiences and it was an opportunity to reflect and reconnect to move forward, Zanetti said.

"[The arts] are a kind of empathy machine, a chance for people to gather and to feel connected, which is really important after the last couple of years that we've had, whether that's being challenged or having a laugh together or a dance together."

The Nelson Arts Festival runs from 20 -30 October, with 56 events, from interactive installations to live theatre, comedy and dance, being held across the region.