Meet the Residents: AJ Fitzwater and Paul Scofield

In Residence

This summer, local artists and artisans will undertake short-term stays at Isolation Hotel.

Each artist will respond to a specially selected taonga (treasure) from the Museum collection. Our contemporary creatives will also deliver an artist talk and Q&A. Come by to see their pop-up studio and learn about their process and practice.

In this free public talk, local writer AJ Fitzwater will join Paul Scofield, Senior Curator Natural History at the Museum, for a lunchtime discussion of some objects they have chosen from the Museum's collection: a selection of moa remains including a leg bone, a skull, a coprolite (fossilised poo), the contents of a long-dead moa's gizzard, and the bones of a moa's voicebox.

AJ and Paul will discuss what these remains can tell us about how moa lived, and AJ will explain how moa are involved in their latest project.

This talk is free to attend but spaces are limited, so please register using the button below if you'd like to come along.

About the speakers

AJ Fitzwater is an artisanal curator of the SFFnal, plucking the choicest words to describe genderpunk worlds and lives. They forage for meaning in short stories which have appeared in a variety of science fiction and fantasy magazines, and longer works which include their shapeshifter novella No Man's Land and lesbian capybara pirate collection "The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper".

Paul Scofield is Senior Curator Human History at Canterbury Museum and Adjunct Professor in Palaeontology in the Geology Department at the University of Canterbury. He has published over 150 scientific papers and is the author of two best selling books The Albatross, Petrels and Shearwaters of the World and Birds of New Zealand: A Photographic Guide.