Weather Assemblage

    with Rāhana Winiata Tito-Taylor (Ngā Puhi, Ngāti Whātua, Tainui), Jake Kīanō Skinner (Ngāti Rangitihi, Tūhoe), Rob Thorne (Ngāti Tumutumu), Eamon Edmundsen-Wells, Sean Martin-Buss, and Len Lye’s Storm sculptures

  • Site Specific Performance Work
  • Govett-Brewster Art Gallery
  • New Plymouth
  • August 2023

  • Photos:  Ilse de Klerk

Video: Belmont Studios and Chris Watson at SOUNZ

Essay by Susan Ballard:

https://govettbrewster.com/explore-art/editorial/a-long-held-breath

Written for taonga pūoro, The Modular Aerophone, and Len Lye’s Storm sculptures, Weather Assemblage was a collaborative performance score exploring the rich tonal structures of Lye’s kinetic works, the famously wild Taranaki weather that these sculptures were inspired by, and the complex cultural interplay of presenting these works in a contemporary setting.

Len Lye was long influenced by and created in response to weather. Writer Janine Randerson “place[s] Len Lye at the beginning of the trajectory of meteorological art.” [1] Weather Assemblage took this idea and examined through Lye’s work how we relate to our environment in Aotearoa, and how music and its performance can explore, present, and embody ways of being that are respectful to the natural world.

The score began with the idea of humans collaborating musically with non-human performers. This is especially relevant in the context of Aotearoa as for practitioners of taonga pūoro instruments are people, with whakapapa, identity, and agency in their music. They are tied to whenua through their materials and to their community through their history. This idea calls for respect towards the natural world and the non-human, and helps position Weather Assemblage as a critique of the environmentally destructive nature of modern human society.

The Modular Aerophone is an instrument constructed by Eamon Edmundson-Wells and Sean Martin-Buss which was repurposed and expanded forWeather Assemblage. Composed of a collection of European brass instruments connected together with commercial garden hoses, valves, and taps, the instrument formed a sprawling network across the gallery, able to be played by one or multiple performers. Installed especially for the opening weekend of Storm, this instrument was a site for connection and reconnection, explored through improvisation, installation, and tubes.

Weather Assemblage brought together te ao Māori and te ao Pākehā, combined traditional and contemporary music making practices, blended sculptural and compositional art approaches, invited the weather into the gallery, and attempted to find a place for humans in the realms of the non-human. 


[1]Randerson, Weather as Medium: Toward a Meteorological Art, MIT Press, 2018