NOise VACANCY is a conceptual art project held in Te Tairāwhiti, Aotearoa New Zealand.
The project recognises the impacts of vacant and neglected spaces in our city centre. It gives a voice to the whakapapa of these spaces and invites the community to engage in a sensory experience that examines the relationship between sound, art, space and people.
NOise VACANCY began in 2020 and 2026 will mark the fourth edition of the event. We're excited to build upon our previous experiences and bring some life, fun and creativity to Gizzy's CBD from Thursday October 1 to Saturday October 3, 2026.
In 2020 NOise VACANCY occupied two storeys of a building that had been vacant for a decade. Each room, cupboard, and safe was taken over by an artist or creative group. The brief was to create a response to the space that involved a sound element. Creatives drew variously upon the history of the building, the land upon which it stood, the current state of the space and the many lives that had taken place within its walls throughout its long history.
NOise VACANCY was visited by 300 people in a one night only experience. It was wild, it was magical and it felt entirely different to life as we had known it until then, here in Tūranga Gisborne.
In 2021 NOise VACANCY occupied another vacant inner city building, this time the Public Trust Office on Childers Road. Again, every nook and cranny of the two storeys were occupied by artists who created installations telling stories about the physical building, its various uses throughout its history and the people whose lives had played out within its walls and on the land upon which it was situated. This edition featured some younger artists, both solo and as a part of a whānau group.
It was a sold out evening. As it took place during Covid, the audience was separated into smaller groups to allow for social distancing and despite the strange times and the masked faces, it was another wonderfully varied, fun and explosively creative event.
2024 NOise VACANCY moved to the streets of Tūranga, Gisborne's CBD. This was partly a response to the difficulties we'd experienced in finding landlords willing to have their vacant buildings occupied even momentarily by creatives for the kaupapa. The NOise VACANCY curators were also excited by the prospect of cracking open the kaupapa a little wider too.
A looser, longer format (9 days!) enabled creatives to participate in different ways, and they did, from grand visions that scaled buildings and walls, to tiny little gifts left to be discovered by passers-by. This on-the-street format allowed us to broaden our engagement too. No longer was our audience limited to people who knew about the kaupapa and had reserved tickets. People could be minding their own business and going about their business only to suddenly find themselves witnessing some street theatre, a flash mob, or wondering at a mysterious queue forming beside a phone box. It was hectic, fun and slightly mad! Enough so that we've decided to build on this format and do it all over again..