Please Return Me to the Earth

Please Return Me to the Earth | We Are Weather - Installation and Performance Part 1 & 2 | Brydee Rood 2017 | Corban Estate Art Centre and Western Park Auckland NZ

We Are Weather saw me collaborate with paleoclimatologist and University of Auckland Associate professor Anthony Fowler HOD of Environmental Studies in the development of an installation, workshop and performance project for the TEMP exhibition of art, science and climate change. In Please Return Me to the Earth 10.8 tons of Huntly coal quantifying the average NZ household's carbon footprint is installed in the centre of the park-like grounds on a wider bed of wood-chips. The performance involved a ritual arrival and dumping of the coal to a grounded public site with an experimental droning composition of earthly, ceremonial bagpipes derived from the iconic musical score Dark Isle by Iain MacLachlan 1963 and a gravitas gathering, collective contemplation, sharing and handling of the coal. Assisting Performer: Robyn Jordaan, Bagpipes: Lewis MacDonald. We Are Weather was generously supported by Creative NZ

Please Return Me to the Earth Part 2 involved the actual writing out of the 10.8tonnes of coal from Part 1, following the terrain of the landscape in Western Park Auckland and measuring 86m long by 7m high. Through this process the coal physically completes an organic cycle of returning to the ground and allowing the carbon to break down into the earth and biodegrade naturally. The text installation was completed through a public working bee supported by Generation Zero and TEMP. 

Images: Brydee Rood 2017

Silageballenchor

Silageballenchor Silage Bale Choir | Brydee Rood 2017 | Light Performance and Installation at Lichtkunst-Nacht with Künstlerdorf Artists in Residence Schöppingen | Vocal experimentation with Gregorian Chanting Sisters: Friederike Weritz, Louise Weritze, Clara Beutler | Site: On the Labyrinth, north of the Bell Tower St. Brictius Parish Church. This project was generously Supported by The Wallace Foundation, Boosted NZ Arts Foundation and Stiftung Künstlerdorf Schöppingen. 

Silageballenchor has evolved in response to the tide of agricultural waste residue from the plastic wrapping of silage bales with single use plastic stretch film. Schöppingen being in the heart of a vast agricultural terrain and in my home land of milk, butter, sheep and beef - New Zealand, these pale green marshmallow plastic wrapped bales that punctuate our landscape and their material dialogue with disposal and single use virgin plastics have inspired this direction in my work. The issue, like the clinging silage film, stretches far and wide on a global scale. 

Photographer: Hubert Hasler

Silageballenchor seeks to re-navigate our relationship with the agricultural waste, which underscores our daily life and habits of consumption. A purposeful movement within plastic shrouds and an experimental voice worship meld together to explore a spirited channeling of light, voice and material through the site; a stone labyrinth, at the foot of the St. Bratcius bell tower. The centre of the labyrinth is marked by a Chi-Rho symbol - a sign often used to mark a particularly valuable or relevant passage, one plastic wrapped silage bale is positioned directly over it within a composition of 3 illuminated silage bales intercepting the labyrinth passage as sacred objects of ritual.  In New Zealand, although there are collection and recycling systems in place where clean collected silage wrap matter is collected and shipped to Malaysia to await its reincarnation as future plastic material, you can still find used silage wrap draped along fences, thrown into rubbish holes, abandoned in paddocks and piled up in mounds awaiting illegal burning. Around 320,000 kilometres of silage wrap is used and disposed of every year in New Zealand - enough to wrap nearly 8 times around the circumference of the Earth. 

Images: Brydee Rood 2017

We Come From the Sea, We Seek Higher Ground

We Come From the Sea, We Seek Higher Ground | Brydee Rood 2017 | Installation at Artweek Auckland with Heart of the City. We Come From the Sea, We Seek Higher Ground in Durham Street East suggests a vessel washed up by a surging wave, dumped at the feet of city dwellers at a point 200m inland from the city’s original shoreline and quiescent beneath a skyline of stormy fragments. The work contemplates issues of climate change, rising tides, changing environments and survival. Materials: Bear Grylls Survival Blankets, Bells, Kayak, Oyster Shells. Funded by Auckland Council and Heart of the City, delivered in partnership with Artweek Auckland. 

 Images: Brydee Rood 2017

We Are Weather - Forever Fanning Futures

Forever Fanning Futures - We Are Weather | Brydee Rood 2017 | A collaborative workshop and installation project exhibited in TEMP Auckland | Generously Supported by Creative NZ. Forever Fanning Futures was collectively created; the 500 fans were installed as a precarious organic cloud-like installation in the ceiling space of the old Saint Michaels and All Angels Chapel at Corban Estate Art Centre. An openly penetrable art installation responding to the critical issue of climate change and how it relates to young minds. 

Workshops focussed on stimulating dialogues on carbon responsibility, sustainability and climate change; providing a space for expression through participatory art. 

Forever Fanning Futures was fresh, experimental, educational and fun with a focus on installation art, and finding ways to express the complexities of climate change issues through drawing, painting and haiku.

Images: Brydee Rood 2017

Survival River Series: Whanganui - Gold Waters

Survival River Series: Whanganui - Gold Waters | Brydee Rood 2016 | Te Whare O Rehua Whanganui - Sarjeant Gallery Whanganui New Zealand.

Floating with a composition of survival blanket pieces on the Whanganui River, I became a caretaker and guardian of the river, seeking balance within a fragile relationship between man and river, the precarious materiality of the pieces an ever shifting dialogue. Survival River Series speaks to the state of emergency faced by many rivers across the world and our complex role as poisoners and potential saviours.

Video stills x2 detail x1| Survival River Series: Whanganui - Gold Waters

There is something very fascinating to me that exists between ritual and habit; of the things we do habitually versus an act of ritual, it seems pretty murky and vague sometimes, maybe some old habits become rituals and some old rituals become habits - the conscious, unconscious, practiced and learnt knowledge that inherently develops our mentality and belief structure and the age old questioning of why we do the things we do? Man’s contemporary relationship with water is questionable, underscored by geopolitics; viewed as a resource to be used, polluted, wasted and consumed at a price all be it economic, social and environmental. The work seeks to quiet the imposed value of water within a capitalist structure, to evoke an alternative value and express a reverent positive memory exchange with the body of water existing within us and connecting us to the earths Rivers.

Sarjeant Gallery Podcast In this episode of the podcast host Sarah McClintock talks with artist Brydee Roods about her practice, performance art, and her new work in the exhibition Still Water Goes Stagnant.

Survival River Series: Whanganui - Gold Waters

Still Water Goes Stagnant - exhibition view | Curator: Sarah McClintock

Survival River Series: River Flag 

Still Water Goes Stagnant - exhibition  view | Curator: Sarah McClintock 

Images: Brydee Rood 2016

Monsoon Prayer for Anjuna River

Monsoon Prayer for Anjuna River - 'We Are Weather Series' | Brydee Rood 2016 | Site specific performance on the river steps by St Anthony's Church in Siolim during the Sao Joao Festival. A second Monsoon Project, following the rains and carrying the ritual bathing cloth from Cemeti Art House Indonesia to HH Art Spaces & Residencies Goa India 2016

Catalogue Text - HH Art Spaces & Residencies Open 9: Monsoon Prayer for Anjuna River is a ritual steeped in the fluid landscape, the artist leads a silent ceremony in the depth of Goa's Monsoon, a communication with the water echoing a sensitive human footfall between earth and sky, a slow meditative prayer for our rapidly changing climate. The old steps form a passage between man and river - by occupying this space, 3 bodies wearing hand painted clay Matka water-pots over their heads and cloaked in garments folded, draped, dyed with natural indigo and detailed with drawings which reference invented ritual, water and change gods - seek confluence within bodies of water, monsoon, patterns of climate change and the localised water festivities of Sao Joao. Geopolitically the action is underscored by the here and now, it is part of an ongoing movement titled 'We Are Weather' reflecting a yearning for our deeper connection with the natural world; the River, weather, to water as an essential life force, not limited as a commodity, resource, thing to be used, consumed, wasted, polluted and profited by in a flailing globalised capitalist system. 

Images: Brydee Rood 2016

What is perceived today may not exist tomorrow…

What is perceived today may not exist tomorrow… | Performance, video and installation project at Asia:NZ Foundation and Cemeti Art House Residency Pasang Air #2 Yogyakarta Indonesia 2016

Indonesian Art Researcher Stanislaus Yangni writes: Rood’s intimate works evolve from an enduring personal passion with the natural world and ecological issues. During the residency, she choose water as an element to speak about human alienation with nature, and created a live bathing project in Sendang Kasihan, Bantul Village; her work was an encounter between mysticism, tradition, environmental change and peoples everyday habits relating with water. What is perceived today may not exist tomorrow… is the title of Rood’s installation containing 6 video works within a multi channel video and sound project. The Rainmaker (2 videos), Bodies of Water (3 videos) and Rain Keeps Falling (1 video) offer us a meditative perception.

Composite Image - 4x Video Stills: Bodies of Water

Bodies of Water Ritual Bathing Action |  Photographer: Mella Jaarsma

Materials: Natural Indigo dyed Batik drawings combining DIY homemade cassava paste resist and Shibori tie-dye processes worn as ritual bathing cloth for the live performance action in the Sendang Kasihan.

The Rainmaker - a 2channel video installation has also been exhibited in Auckland's Malcolm Smith Gallery Uxbridge Arts and Culture in the exhibition Sacred Economies curated by Balamohan Shingade - reviewed by John Hurrel on Eye Contact with images of the exhibition on Arts Diary

2channel Video Stills: The Rainmaker

Video Still: Rain Keeps Falling

Images: Brydee Rood 2016

Between Worlds

Between Worlds | Brydee Rood and Harpreet Singh | A guided performance walk from Auckland Diwali Festival to The Story of Rama exhibition at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki 2015

Between Worlds is an interactive walking performance and live installation using 52 handmade flags created from saffron hued turban cloth, carried by people transforming into an ephemeral installation in the Auckland Art Gallery Pool. We were inspired by the Rama exhibit, lakes and rivers features prevalently in many of the Rama miniature paintings the acknowledging of water is also symbolic of a point of crossing from place to place, making a journey to The Next World as in the story of Rama and the title of the final chapter which has inspired our title Between Worlds. Between Worlds opens up a universal context and shifts between - crossing the divide from the Diwali Festival and Auckland Art Gallery and making journeys in life crossing oceans and cultures to new places and peoples. 1 tonne of river stones fills 52 buckets forming the resting installation.  

Procession Photographs: David St George | Installation Photographs: Brydee Rood

The inspiration for the 52 flags comes from the Sikh tradition and story of Diwali, the narrative as a metaphor for the procession that we will make has many relevant crossovers to contemporary life, migration, climate change, displaced peoples, the act of coming to new lands; fusing these universal narratives together in a localised Auckland multicultural context and the unique platform which gives a voice to contemporary art practice and navigates both physical and theoretical space between the Auckland Art Gallery and the Diwali Festival.

Images: Brydee Rood and Harpreet Singh