Please join us to celebrate the presentation of May the Winds Not Carry Us Out to Sea, a new video work exploring experimental sound collaboration, directed and performed by Brydee Rood in collaboration with a selection of brass wind musicians and percussion from Brass Whanganui collectively known as Damn Raucous Brass.
This new iteration of May the Winds Not Carry Us Out to Sea was first enacted as a live event in the Gonville Town Hall as an InterArts presentation with Rood’s large windsock soft sculpture. The final work was presented on September 23 – 25 2022 with GCUR – the Gonville Centre for Urban Research, Whanganui.
The ephemeral bus-sized sculpture measures out a four times airport scale, proportioned windsock at 14600 mm long and 3600 mm in diameter at the mouth and 1000 mm at the tail, technically, the sculpture is reversible, it has been quilted in sections, tacked with brightly coloured tapes and joined with seams of clear wide packaging tape inside and out. The massive floppy sculptural form is a problem too large to handle alone, a metaphor for the reality of the scale of crisis we face in cleaning our oceans of unwanted plastics and striving to make them pure again. Airing this artwork in public space highlights our need to join together in removing disposable plastics from our everyday lives, inciting change in our societies and habits of consumption through art, acting as catalysts towards a plastic-free future. The initial installation was launched on 2018 World Environment Day and installed during a 2-week period through to the evening of World Oceans Day as a commission for the United Nations Environment Programme, supported by Panuku Development Auckland and Greenpeace.
This new performance piece evolved over several months in 2022 and navigated a sequence of improvised soundscapes in creating a final composition of sculptural and spatial relationships working with experimental, intuitive sound making content in response to the artwork, its concept and poetic title May the Winds Not Carry Us Out to Sea, its presence, materiality, undulations and movements. The live performance was around 25minutes in length, the arising video footage has been edited into a final documenting piece.
Echoing through rising gravity & pendulant pauses of the soundscape – May the Winds Not Carry Us Out to Sea connects us with dialogues of plastic pollution and the act of flailing precariously and urgently towards preserving the earth’s vital ocean habitats, critically engaging with mankind’s relationship to climate change and alarmingly polluted seas.
Opens: Wednesday 17 May, 5.30pm, with refreshments by Liberty Breweries and Decibel Wines
Hours: 12 – 4pm, Tuesday – Saturday
Closes: Saturday 17 June
Artist biography:
Brydee Rood’s work across installation and sculptural practice draws from her experiences living in New Zealand, Germany, India, USA, Japan, The Netherlands and Mexico, and the inherent attitudes and patterns of consumption and materiality present in these places. Her work has been selected for exhibition in environments ranging from urban canals and coastal national parks to dessert villages; to the exterior of a working rubbish truck; to a solo project artist booth at PULSE Contemporary Art Fair; from one night installations in New York and into the underbellies and back street alleys of Wellington, Melbourne and Berlin. Successive installation, performance and action based projects including For A World Without Waste and The Waste Whisperer Series navigate material lines of waste and value in a changing world environment.
http://brydeerood.blogspot.com
May the Winds Not Carry Us Out to Sea was supported by Creative Communities Whanganui
Videographer: Theo Taylor