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