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

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

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

A Warm Breeze Blowing

A Warm Breeze Blowing | Brydee Rood 2015 | Site Specific Performance and Sound Installation

A TIDELINES project curated by Jaenine Parkinson in tandem with Waterfront Auckland, The Arts Foundation - Boosted NZ, Silo Park. Rood performed the work in collaboration with Tamashii Taiko Drummers. The performance of A Warm Breeze Blowing unfolded on on a stepped terrace, intersecting where land meets sea. The essential action of dumping a sacred offering of 4tonnes of melting ice from Sanfords the local seaside fish market, onto the sea steps to greet the rising tide was a ritual act of global cooling. 

Link: A Warm Breeze Blowing published on 1MillionWomen Climate Change Action

Photographer: Joanna Wright | Images: Brydee Rood 2015