Geothermal index
Karen Hansen's current major line of investigation, awarded for Innovation in New Zealand Art.
Currently under development toward exhibition.
Geothermal Index
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Primordial (2025)
Awarded the Watts and Hughes Innovation in Art Award (2026).
Primordial (Karen Hansen, 2026).
Silk; Hawthorn dye; botanical contact printing; iron-oxidation process; geothermal sulphur steam burial (fumarole)
SOLD - Private Collection
Emerging from deep relationship with the unique landscapes of Rotorua, this silk carries a print co-authored between the artist, a Hawthorn tree in Linton Park West, and a volcanic fumarole within the Rotorua Sulphur Flats. The work was created through immersion dyeing with Hawthorn, botanical contact, tight bundling, and burial within a live geothermal vent, allowing heat, steam, sulphur and time to act directly upon the cloth.
This practice is grounded in a relational, animistic methodology that approaches land, plants and geological forces as active participants rather than inert materials. Through sustained listening and slow, place-based process, Hawthorn and Sulphur were engaged as allies and co-creators, shaping the work through their inherent chemical, thermal and transformational behaviours.
Rather than representing Place, Primordial records my encounter with it. The resulting surface is an index of Rotorua’s living geology: fractured golds, deep bronzes, shadowed creases and delicate tracery formed through pressure, heat and botanical chemistry. Drawing on cross-cultural Indigenous ways of knowing that understand whenua as sentient and responsive, this work reflects a return to animistic origins where making becomes an act of relationship, reciprocity and care.
This practice is grounded in a relational, animistic methodology that approaches land, plants and geological forces as active participants rather than inert materials. Through sustained listening and slow, place-based process, Hawthorn and Sulphur were engaged as allies and co-creators, shaping the work through their inherent chemical, thermal and transformational behaviours.
Rather than representing Place, Primordial records my encounter with it. The resulting surface is an index of Rotorua’s living geology: fractured golds, deep bronzes, shadowed creases and delicate tracery formed through pressure, heat and botanical chemistry. Drawing on cross-cultural Indigenous ways of knowing that understand whenua as sentient and responsive, this work reflects a return to animistic origins where making becomes an act of relationship, reciprocity and care.
Return to Earth (2026)
Karen Hansen, Return to Earth (2026), Recycled Silk, Methyl Cellulose, Earth Pigments, Geothermal Burial. Archival, reversible sealant.
Available for Enquiry.
Shaped through a process of textile mâché, casting my own face and partial torso in recycled silk and building form slowly by hand. Before the silk became skin, it was taken into the geothermal earth and buried with kokowai and methyl-cellulose inside a volcanic fumarole, where heat, vapour, minerals, and time leave their trace on the substrate.
Sacred red ochre, kōkōwai, often described as the blood of the earth, was used alongside clay pigments gathered from places connected to my grief and healing, to extend the palette designed by the fumarolic environment. The Soft grey mineralisation effect is geothermal mud.
. Working in close relationship with land, place, and spirit, I allow material to guide the work as much as intention. Through this practice, the earth becomes both mirror and support, offering strength, reflection, and pathways of return.
I am wahi tapu (sacred space), wahi tapu is me.
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Hammered Woad in Mud (2025)
Karen Hansen, Hammered Woad in Mud, (2025). Initial Materials test: Woad, geothermal mud on cotton. 220x220x15 mm
SOLD - Private Collector.
I have been growing The Ancestral Pigment of pre-celtic peoples in my dye and medicine garden, and experimenting with colour extraction using non-traditional methods to see what may be created. For this sample piece, I hammered woad leaves into mordanted cotton, before layering with other plants, bundling, and immersing in a semi-viscuous geothermal mud pool I have been sitting with.There is always something that catches my heart, when edges are raw, colour is smashed and messy in just the right places. When geothermal staining, takes on imagery of it's own and adds interest to a work that otherwise could look too pure. too clean, too unnatural. Life is messy and layered with contrast.
GENESIS (2026)
Karen Hansen, Genesis (2026). Concrete, Iron, Mineral Desposition, Museum Grade Archival Sealant on canvas.
Genesis marks the emergence of a new form within my Geothermal Index practice: the accretion work.
As with the wider Geothermal Index practice, Genesis is not an attempt to imitate geothermal landscape. It is a record of direct encounter with it. Genesis was formed by releasing human authorship to give the Geothermal field of Te Arikiroa, Rotorua, a substrate and materials to write upon over time.
This is a slow process. The work carries both accumulation and loss. Matter was deposited while other matter was eroded away. Some areas built themselves outward; others became translucent through abrasion. The reverse of the canvas also gathered its own quieter field of pale mineral sediment, recording another aspect of the work’s encounter with water, flow and duration.
GENESIS is the first of Karen Hansen's accretion canvases. Beginning from darkness, the work returned carrying mineral light.