To Avoid Drowning, Become the Ocean

To Avoid Drowning, Become the Ocean

Sam Hamilton (Sam Tam Ham)

June 26 - August 15, 2026

Opening Reception:  Friday, June 26, 7–9 PM
Free and open to the public

A special performance with Sarah Cameron Sunde will take place Saturday, June 27, 2–4 PM

The Luminary is pleased to announce To Avoid Drowning, Become the Ocean, a newly commissioned installation by Sam Hamilton, an interdisciplinary artist from Aotearoa (New Zealand), realized through a socially engaged process in which the artist directs a collective of participants as a form of sonic choreography.

Using breath as a principal mode of expression, this group literally (and figuratively) translates sounds of the ocean into a delicate choral tapestry. Installed throughout the gallery, the resulting composition forms a sustained sonic field that suspends its audience between change and stillness, individualism and collectivism, life and matter. The work is as immediately recognisable as it is securely unhurried in its need to fully reveal itself.

Hamilton’s practice approaches art as a form of action, where meaning emerges through process and participation. The exhibition builds on works such as Te Moana Meridian, which proposes relocating the prime meridian to the Pacific Ocean to question how time, territory, and authority are structured.

Across the exhibition, the ocean is treated as a system rather than an image—circulatory and continuous, linking bodies through breath, water, and atmosphere. In a landlocked context, the work asks how relation is felt rather than seen.

To Avoid Drowning, Become the Ocean establishes a set of conditions rather than a fixed narrative, inviting sustained attention, gradual perception, and a reconsideration of how collective processes take shape.