Diversions is a project based around the impact of dementia within New Zealand. This centres on extended family relationships and the impact of the condition on immediate family and sufferers. The foundation of this project looks upon memories that are most recent being lost within the transition. The work is a series of photographic moving images pieces, that interrogate factors within the mind of someone who collectively archived their memories and the dissolution of memory. The way in which this disease robs the afflicted individual of memory is at the heart of the project.

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The main subject of this project is on my Nana, Janet Wareing (Cree), who was born originally in Sydney, Australia. She moved to New Zealand for travel but ended staying longer than she intended when she met Herbert Peter Wareing (who preferred to go by Peter), who she ended up marrying. The pair were together for well over 50 years and were  close to their 60th year of marriage. They had two children and five grandchildren. Residing around the Kāpiti Coast, where they volunteered with projects along the Ōtaki river to help the protection of the natural environment and the ability to get out and about.
 

In their final years both were diagnosed with dementia and stayed in the same apartment at the dementia home in Levin.

 

Peter died on the 30th March 2018 and Janet on the 3rd July 2020.