May the Winds Not Carry Us Out to Sea II

May the Winds Not Carry Us Out to Sea II | Installation and Performance | Brydee Rood 2022 | Whanganui NZ

This new iteration of May the Winds Not Carry Us Out to Sea explores experimental sound collaboration, directed and performed with a selection of musicians from Brass Whanganui collectively known as Damn Raucous Brass, on site in the Gonville Town Hall as an interarts presentation with my large windsock soft sculpture. Presenting this work in the old Gonville Town Hall September 23 - 25 2022 with GCUR - the Gonville Centre for Urban Research, enlivens & sustains a publicly accessible, creative activation of the space for the community to enjoy. This free community art event was generously supported by the Whanganui District Creative Communities Scheme

Images: Brydee Rood 2022

Becoming a Sunset

Becoming a Sunset | Installation | Brydee Rood | AOS 2022 Whanganui NZ

Becoming a Sunset is composed of a series of te Rā inspired sun panels, 38 variations of staring into the setting sun for a room with 38 windows on L4 of the Brutalist building, 133 Wicksteed St, Whanganui.  The materials used are heat-fused, collaged, assorted international and local rubbish bags - collected and archived over the past 15years of installation and performance practice responding to waste and plastic pollution.

Images: Brydee Rood 2022

Island, Is Land, We Land

Island, Is Land, We Land | Performance, Live Installation | Welcome to Nowhere Festival | Brydee Rood 2021 | Mangamahu NZ 

Island, Is Land, We Land was undertaken on the morning of Sunday February 7th 2021 at the Welcome to Nowhere festival in Mangamahu, in the rural outskirts of Whanganui. A communal artist led performance on a tiny island site in the Mangamahu Stream, digging into our embodied connection with the whenua and the poetic construct of being an island together. The work seeks a deeper relationship with the Earth we inhabit in the critical context of Climate Emergency; Island, Is Land, We Land is a shared act of bare, ritual stillness. The concept also reflects narratives of isolation and togetherness in COVID-19 times. Participants gathered stream-side and removed their clothing, swimming naked to the island where 2 buckets of Papa rock, collected and carried to the site from Kai Iwi were waiting. With slow purposeful intent we collectively covered each other with the soft Papa in a connected movement of bodies, breath and voice.

Island, Is land, We Land | Photography and Sound Installation

Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui - The Sarjeant Gallery 2022 | Images: Brydee Rood 2021

A Future Canopy

A Future Canopy | Living Sculpture | Brydee Rood 2021 | Whanganui NZ 

A Future Canopy consists of six species of native trees; Tōtara, Kōwhai, Pūriri, Rata, Rewarewa and Miro - spread across the two green islands of the Burton Avenue to provide a continual food source of flowers, nectar and fruit for native fauna and pollinators. The habitat created will cater to the local birdlife and residents over generations to come. The inherent physicality and plant lore of the chosen trees creates a living composition that will enrich local ecology in the suburban landscape.

The official opening and planting day on Monday June 14 2021, involved sixty students from Whanganui East School, Whanganui Girls’ College, Cullinane College, St Anne’s Catholic School. As part of the project, each school planted a tree at this site and were gifted selection of native trees for their own satellite plantings on school grounds. A Future Canopy, was developed as a permanent public artwork with support from the Whanganui District Council parks team, the community arts coordinator and funding from the Eleanor Burgess Trust. Media: A Future Canopy - video of the planting day  | Article: Artist works with council and schools on ‘living sculpture’ project

Images: Brydee Rood 2021

Everything Rises

Everything Rises | Walking Performance - Live Installation | Urban Walking Festival | Takapuna Beach NZ | Brydee Rood 2019 

Everything Rises was an artist lead collective walk in the rising tide under the rising full moon. A  peaceful immersive intertidal sea walk in the elements, in formation. The walk is a movement tracing the incoming tide with a hand tied, glowing line of 400 solar lights carried by participants. A climate emergency vigil in contemplation of the nature around us and the future changing landscapes of low lying coastal areas and the implications of our human footprint.

Everything Rises | Brydee Rood 2019 - Photographer: Jody Yawa McMillan

Everything Rises | Brydee Rood 2019

A Remedy for Hopelessness

A Remedy for Hopelessness - Te Henga Gorse Collection Ritual | Performance, Photography and Drone Capture Video | Te Henga Auckland NZ | Supported by MAC Artist in Residence Programme | Brydee Rood 2019 

A Remedy for Hopelessness involved a ritual collecting of Gorse Bushes Gorse; Ulex europaeus of the Fabaceae (pea) family from land at Te Henga over several continuous hours of the day. The performance references the healing nature of the plant, the Gorse state of being, meshing with one's own feelings of despair in the face of human failure, unrelenting capitalism, climate change and extinction; working through contemporary intersections of art, caretaking, landscape and ecology. The work engages visual and conceptual narratives that stretch between the colonially rampant weed and the golden-yellow flowering bush - known as a Bach Flower Remedy for Hopelessness. 

Gorse has tenacious roots and like other legumes it catalyses nitrogen from the upper atmosphere – with a special ability to bring fertility and vitality to otherwise isolated and barren soils flourishing resilient in places where other vegetation cannot. It is these penetrating and fierce qualities of Gorse, which have personally driven me to work with it in my performance as part of a new body of work. The essence of Gorse is intrinsically connected with the gathering of the Gorse bushes. By working with Gorse at a physical level, I embody a poetic contemplation of its medicinal, magical and permacultural properties and values; contemplating its relationship to wellbeing through creative practice. This collecting of Gorse Bushes marks the beginning of a new direction in my work.

 A Remedy for Hopelessness Gorse Collection Ritual - Brydee Rood 2019 | Shutterbug - Conan Fitzpatrick

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A Dance That Lasts Forever

A Dance That Lasts Forever | Installation | Waiheke Island Sculpture on the Gulf NZ | Brydee Rood 2019
As the work creates a movement with the wind and the site, it reflects the dance of our consumed traces repeating in nature. Echoing the drift of micro-plastics carried in the elements a dance of dire consequence for ocean habitats and marine species. By hoisting large colour sheets to the wind, soft plastics flutter on lines that lean and tilt with a precarity that is true to its context. I am placing the material again in our path, floating visibly in our mind’s eye. A dance that passes through our touch so fleetingly yet a dance that lasts forever.

Images: Brydee Rood 2019

May the Winds Not Carry Us Out to Sea

May the Winds Not Carry Us Out to Sea | Public Art Installation for World Environment Day with the United Nations Asia Pacific Environment Office and support from Panuku Development, Kiwi Bottle Drive and Greenpeace NZ | Eastern Viaduct Auckland NZ | Brydee Rood 2018 

Article on Design Boom and Video by Greenpeace NZ UN Environment Feature: Plastic the Art Medium of the Modern Era

Images: Brydee Rood 2018

Tide Rise Sun Wake

Tide Rise Sun Wake | HD Video with Sound 20.56 loop | Takapuna New Zealand | Brydee Rood 2018

Following Solar Nap Coal Rest, this is the second work in a series of intertidal performance and video works responding to the criticality of Climate Change and performed lying in wait for the engulfing kiss and swallow of a rising tide. Filmed wth the support of Mairangi Art Centre and Creative Communities Scheme Auckland with curator Angela Suh.

Exhibition images on Arts Diary

Tide Rise Sun Wake | Composite Image 4x Video Stills 

Tide Rise Sun Wake | Video Installation 

Images: Brydee Rood 2018

Solar Nap Coal Rest

Solar Nap Coal Rest | Performance at PAWA Performance Art Week Aotearoa | Brydee Rood 2017 Wellington New Zealand. 

Solar Nap Coal Rest is about energy, sustainability and climate change – encircling dialogues about personal and collective power systems, fossil fuels, the national grid and New Zealand’s current political posturing around these critical concerns. I lay in the intertidal zone of Island Bay, taking a nap before the rising tide and setting sun. I was cocooned in a gold emergency survival blanket with my head on a pillow of raw coal nuggets and a line of solar powered LEDs drawing a line up to the high tide mark. There’s strength in lying there and knowing that the ocean is coming up, feeling resilient yet fragile in a freezing Wellington onshore gale. For most of us the knowledge that the ocean is rising rests somewhere in the recesses of our minds. Uncomfortable, but far from urgent. This work asks us to consider "Can we afford to take a nap in the face of climate change?"

Feature Article Come Hell or High Water by Julian McKinnon published in Art News New Zealand Autumn Edition 2018 and Cover.

Images: Brydee Rood 2018 | Photographs by Sara Cowdell and Essi Airisniemi

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