Three works by contemporary artist Brydee Rood were coordinated by Local Time for presentation at the Parihaka International Peace Festival 2008:

Te Tira Whetū Tank (The Milkyway Tank) (2006-2008)

Te Mangō Roa Taranaki Tank (The Galaxy of Mt. Taranaki Tank) (2006-2008)

Te Mangō Roa Titiwai: Mushroom-lover 1891 (Galaxia Bolitiphila Luminosa: New Zealand Glow-worm Galaxy) (2008)

By day, if you lift the flap and venture inside the tank works, you will see drawings made by holes in the sides of the two re-purposed water tanks. By night, Te Mangō Roa Titiwai will also reveal a drawing made by points of light, in this case solar lights that might line your driveway. Brydee’s work often uses everyday, synthetic materials like these to refer to the natural environment. The beauty she creates out of them could give us pause to notice afresh the way that plastics are all around us, and not that they are simply good or bad but tied up in the complexity of contemporary human relationships to the land.

Brydee says that for her the solar light drawing is “fundamentally about making a space for pause, a moment where usual time is lost, like when we pause to wonder at the stars or gaze at cluster of glow worms on the damp earthy bank….”

Brydee Rood was born in 1978 in Auckland where she now lives and works, after years in Japan and Mexico. She holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Elam School of Fine Arts, The University of Auckland.

For this project special thanks are due to Te Miringa Hohaia, RX Plastics LTD, Baileys Tanks NZ, Donna Willard-Moore and The Warehouse.