‘Unguided Endeavour’ Installation 2023.

(Audio)‘Guardians Converse’ Britney Saywell 2023.

Materials:

• Suspended from the taught string are four dried mangrove shoots -barnacles.
• Iron rock; collected for a nearby bay.
• Driftwood collected from around the cliff at the wetland.
• Mangrove shoots from the wetland at low tide.
• Tussock grass collected from a nearby land beyond the tidal lines of the wetland.
• Black wool string.
• Stereo speakers and DVD player.
• CD/DVD – ‘Guardians Converse’2023 (looped) L=Forward R=Backward.

Over the last two years, Britney Saywell has built an iterative making process with Northland wetlands at the centre. Installations The Silence Sings 2022, Scorched Silence 2023, Undercurrents 2023, and ‘Dust I Am Not’ 2023 have cultivated a relationship with the land. The history of the wetland has finally taken ground within the relationship as Saywell moves from present experience to the memories in Aotearoa wetland.

This installation is a mapping of landmarks and sound marks within the wetland. As I navigate my way through the wetland. The fluid mapping alludes to the unveiling of a landscape. Bog is known across the world for its lack of height in relation to other types of landscape. The wetlands in New Zealand are no different. Through a taught string Britney Saywell explores an activated sky – disassembling beliefs about space occupation or land.

Suspended mangrove shoots slowly move mid-air as sound work, ‘Guardians Converse, 2023’ blows through them. Each of the four mangrove shoots are playing the role of a Guardian in the wetland. Referring to a four Toe Toe protruding from the landscape.

From Swamp To Wetland –

Challenging ideas around this space of our land that aren’t considered ideal destinations; Saywell wants us to push against colonialist Captain James Cook’s old Western mindset of the Swamp. Where swamps are viewed with disgust and disappointment. Hard work ahead to cultivate the land. Worthless land in the extreme.

‘Unguided Endeavour’2023 nods to the misunderstandings British Colonialists held upon their arrival up the Thames River in Aotearoa. Arriving of Cook’s ship, ‘The Endeavour.’ Looking out over the traditional Māori landscape Cook saw wasteland for miles and miles. As we now know, Northland is farmland, but it never used to be. Wetlands used to cover inland Northland in great expanses.

The audience is met by material from a place many tend not to venture through. The Wetlands can tell their own story to cultivate affection with the viewer. Brewing possibilities for the stories preserved in the wetlands to tell of the lost landscape.

Britney Saywell