Anna Briers

📣Exhibition announcement 📣 Excited for this one (soft opening this weekend / party June 27)… Direct Bodily Empathy — Sound, Signal, Feedback @govettbrewster 4 April – 11 October 2026 Artists: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Andrew Faleatua + Stroma, Simon Ingram, Len Lye, Machine Listening, Yuko Mohri, Aura Satz, Rachel Shearer, Weather Cry, YoungEun Kim. Curator: Anna Briers Direct Bodily Empathy – Sound, Signal, Feedback explores sound as a material force of consequence in the world. Through audible currents and felt vibrations, sirens and noise, deep listening is used as a means of knowledge building and a tool for critically engaging with a planet in crisis.   Spanning the Len Lye Centre, Aotearoa and international artists and collectives examine sonic relationalities and the politics of sound. Through audio encounters, they harness more-than-human co-performers, such as the wind, decomposing fruit, and native birdsong, to amplify the voices of weather systems, sonify carbon flows, and attune with the morning avian chorus. They listen after nature through acoustic ecologies, use audio material as legal evidence, and unsettle colonial sound archives—affirming Indigenous ways of being and knowing. The exhibition asks: What does a healthy ecosystem sound like? How can sound act as a decolonial gesture? What are the techno-politics of machine listening? And what sirens and warnings are needed to survive the future? @mo_hrizm @lawrenceabuhamdan @simoningram.xyz @youngeunkiim @machinelistening @ aurasatz @thelovelymidget @sternjoel @sdockray @arfeleatua @phildadsonic @jamesfrancismccarthy @stroma.ensemble @Lenlyefoundation @starkwhite @gowlangsford @maureenpaley @ngataongasv Images: Aura Satz, Sirening (as a verb), 2026. Still from multi-channel video installation HD and 16mm, duration variable. © and courtesy the artist, London

📣Exhibition announcement 📣 I’m excited to announce part 1 of a major new show: Direct Bodily Empathy - Sensing Sound opening 17 May 2025 @govettbrewster Artists: Mel O’Callaghan, Roy de Maistre, Oskar Fischinger, Yona Lee, Len Lye, Ross Manning, Mia Salsjö + musicians from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, David Sequeira. Curator: Anna Briers Direct Bodily Empathy – Sensing Sound explores sound as a medium, and the dimensions of sympathetic resonance, attuning with shared vibration, embodied knowledge, and the physical act of deep listening. The exhibition spans sonic structures and resonant objects, graphic scores and visual music, tangible motion sculptures and kinetic installations, architectural soundings, experimental films, composition, and choreography. Taking a polyphonic approach, Direct Bodily Empathy places leading 20th century artist Len Lye in concert with his contemporaries, elaborating on these historical echoes through new commissions and recent works by Aotearoa and international contemporary artists. Leading out a two-part exhibition programme, Sensing Sound asks: Can architecture be a musical score? Can the body be an instrument? Can colour be heard? How does this move us? Curated to celebrate the 10th anniversary year of the Len Lye Centre, the exhibition includes A Score for the Len Lye Centre, where artist composer Mia Salsjö has transposed the shimmering architectural contours of the art museum into a musical score. This composition will be performed by musicians from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra on August 30, then displayed as a sound installation as part of an evolving performance program. @mel_ocallaghan @miacerasalsjo @ylee138 @rossfmanning @lenlyefoundation #oskarfischinger #roydemaistre #lenlye @nzsymphonyorchestra @davidsequeirastudio 1_ Mel O’Callaghan First Sound, Last Sound, 2022. Installation view, Esker Foundation, Calgary, Canada, 2023. 🙏 @cassandra_bird image: Elyse Bouvier 2_Ross Manning Spectra XIII, 2017. Image: Ben Vox.   3_Mia Salsjö Composition #4: The Towers, 2023. Image: Christian Capurro 🙏 Govett-Brewster Foundation @nzsymphonyorchestra @melbourneartfair @friends_of_gbag_llc @ngataongasv

Any excuse to play on rooftops really… Perched on the rooftop of the Len Lye Centre, two wind-activated aeolian harps perform a duet. As weather-sensing devices, they transmit an encounter between sonic sculptures and atmospheres from their vantage above to our ear canals in the gallery below, enabling deep listening. They could be read as both barometers of weather, or warning sirens of ecological balance gone awry—a means of registering climate volatility through sound.   The harps are silent when the weather is still, harmonic when calm, and dissonant when wild, delivering a constantly changing performance as seasonal patterns shift. Weather becomes a co-composer.   The term ‘aeolian’ derives from the Greek word for wind, likely from the sound of the wind blowing through animal intestines hung out to air dry. For the artists, these sonic sculptures act as metaphorical bodies, their vibrating strings recalling vocal cords that voice the wind, enabling the weather to speak. From their shared vantage on the Gallery roof, Weather Cry’s Aeolian harps dance to the same currents as Len Lye’s nearby Wind Wand (1996) on the Costal Walkway. Now showing in Direct Bodily Empathy - Sound, Signal, Feedback @govettbrewster 🙏 @phildadsonic @jamesfrancismccarthy @lenlyefoundation . Weather Cry (Phil Dadson and James McCarthy)
Aeolian harps: Ethereal #1, Ethereal #2, 2026. laminated sustainable pine, birchwood ply, polystyrene analogue-audio-tape boxes, steel piano pegs, hardwood bridges, marshmallow contact mics, nylon, wire, steel, rubber, paint, 12-channel audio mixer, dimensions variable.
courtesy of the artists, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland and Whakatāne. Image Cheska Brown . Len Lye Wind Wand, 1996, on New Plymouth coastal walkway. Image: Bryan James

Join us tomorrow at 12pm @govettbrewster for an artist talk from Simon Ingram on his major new commission Vibrating World: Rotokare Forest, 39.45254° S, 174.41727° E, 2026. Vibrating World is an immersive installation that reveals an ecosystem reclaiming its voice. A point cloud model of pukatea-kahikatea swamp forest is illuminated by the acoustic energy of the dawn chorus — the birdsong of kiwi, korimako, pōpokotea, riroriro, ruru, titipounamu, toutouwai, and tūī. LiDAR scans of native bush and spatial audio recordings of bird vocalisations recode the tools and technologies of Western science and extractive industries such as forestry and mining towards ecological ends. The work is a call to listen, attune, and pay attention to the vibratory realm of Tāne-mahuta (atua of the forest and birds). Presented within the Len Lye Centre, the work models a section of Rotokare Scenic Reserve in the rohe of Ngāti Tupaia 60 kilometres away. A community-led predator-free sanctuary ringed by an 8.2-kilometre fence, Rotokare contains the largest surviving remnant of the Ngaere swamp, a lowland ecology that once covered 4,000 hectares prior to the region’s colonial occupation, confiscation, and conversion to agricultural land. The dawn chorus heard here is the sound of a forest recovering from settler-colonial land mismanagement. Working in partnership with Ngāti Tupaia, Rotokare has eradicated twelve introduced mammals and translocated numerous native birds back into the sanctuary, functioning as a kōhanga (nursery), breeding kiwi for release across the region. . . . Collaborators: Richard Brown, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University; Tane Houston, Pou Atawhai–Taranaki Mounga; Stephen Marsland, Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington; Dan McRae, LOT23; Padriac Amato Tahua O’Leary, Waipapa Taumata Rau; Sam Tozer, LOT23; Te Kāhui o Taranaki; Aldo Visini, Waipapa Taumata Rau; Elliot Wen, Waipapa Taumata Rau; Zirui Zhao, Waipapa Taumata Rau. Supported by: The Chartwell Trust, and Waipapa Taumata Rau The University of Auckland. . 🙏 @chartwellproject @rotokare @gowlangsford @universityofauckland @lot23studio . @elamartists

Direct Bodily Empathy – Sound, Signal, Feedback 04 Apr - 11 Oct 2026 Direct Bodily Empathy – Sound, Signal, Feedback explores sound as a material force of consequence in the world. Through audible currents and felt vibrations, sirens and noise, deep listening is used as a means of knowledge building and a tool for critically engaging with a planet in crisis. Spanning the Len Lye Centre, Aotearoa and international artists and collectives examine sonic relationalities and the politics of sound. Through audio encounters, they harness more-than-human co-performers, such as the wind, decomposing fruit, and native birdsong, to amplify the voices of weather systems, sonify carbon flows, and attune with the dawn chorus. They listen after nature through acoustic ecologies, use audio material as legal evidence, and unsettle colonial sound archives—affirming Indigenous ways of being and knowing. The exhibition asks: What does a healthy ecosystem sound like? How can sound act as a decolonial gesture? What are the techno-politics of machine listening? And what sirens and warnings are needed to survive the future? Artists: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Andrew Faleatua + Stroma, Simon Ingram, Len Lye, Machine Listening, Yuko Mohri, Aura Satz, Rachel Shearer, Weather Cry, YoungEun Kim Curators: Anna Briers Find out more via link in bio __________ 1: Simon Ingram, Vibrating World: Rotokare Forest, 39.45254˚ S, 174.41727 ˚ E, 2026. two-channel video, surround sound, duration variable. © Simon Ingram, courtesy Gow Langsford, Auckland. 2 & 3: Aura Satz, Sirening (as a verb), 2026. Still from multi-channel video installation HD and 16mm, duration variable. © and courtesy the artist, London. 4: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Walled Unwalled, 2018. single channel video installation, duration 20 mins and 4 secs. © Lawrence Abu Hamdan, courtesy Maureen Paley, London. 5: Yuko Mohri, Decomposition, 2022. Fruit, speaker, cable, wood, computer, dimensions variable. Installation view in Art & New Ecology, The 5th Floor, Tokyo, 2022. Image: Naoki Takehisa. courtesy of the artist, Project Fulfill Art Space, mother’s tankstation, Yutaka Kikutake Gallery, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, WHITE SPACE.

Did you miss Mia Salsjö’s A Score for the Len Lye Centre with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra performing @govettbrewster in August? Now you can hear the work in the gallery playing twice hourly until March 15. If this building could sing, what would it sound like? In A Score for the Len Lye Centre artist and composer Mia Salsjö has transposed the shimmering architectural contours of our art museum into a musical score. Commissioned for the tenth anniversary, the work spans 1,000 graphic scores, performances by musicians from the NZSO, and a sound installation. Mia Salsjö’s architectural sonification is an act of translation, transposing the language of a built structure into sound. To compose this work, Salsjö traced over hundreds of plans gifted to her by Pattersons architects, applying her own idiosyncratic, colour-coded numerical system. Their spatial and mathematical relationships were superimposed with musical staves to determine varying pitch and notation. The curvilinear folds of the building, and its materials of concrete and steel, became data points, alongside Lye’s gestural marks and doodles, which were integrated as sonic figures. Composed for thirteen strings, a synthesiser also plays recordings of Len Lye’s kinetics. Lye correlated his sculptures with musical instruments, leaving their sonic traces in the archive for the then unknowable composers of the future to use. Find out more and watch the short clip on our website now - link in bio. ________ Mia Salsjö A Score for the Len Lye Centre, 2025. Performance with musicians from the @nzsymphonyorchestra led by conductor Hamish McKeich, as part of Direct Bodily Empathy – Sensing Sound curated by Anna Briers at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery | Len Lye Centre. Musical score © and courtesy Mia Salsjö and Mark Buys 2025. Recording and sound engineer John Neill. Audio samples of Len Lye’s kinetics recorded by Wayne Laird, Dave Hurley and Shirley Horrocks © and courtesy of the Len Lye Foundation. Videography Ankit Mishra. Govett-Brewster Art Gallery Collection. Supported by Govett-Brewster Foundation Donors and Members. Supporting Partner: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Te Tira Pūoro o Aotearoa.

First Sound, Last Sound Remembering the special moment Helena Rollins leant into the tuning fork as the other was struck with @Bhavanidavies 🤍 in Direct Bodily Empathy curated @anna_briers @govettbrewster 'First Sound, Last Sound', was a sensory performance that calls your body into deep resonance with the living frequency of the Earth. As performers activated large-scale tuning forks tuned to the ‘god note’—256 hertz—they were immersed in sympathetic vibration, a sound not just heard, but felt—cellular, primal, and ancient. Deepest thanks to the amazing local New Plymouth performers and audiences who gave so much to make this work. Bhavani Alanis @Bhavanidavies Ram Davies @Sanctuaryhillretreat Hannah Dixon Helena Rollins Alyssa McCarty @15alymcc Geoffery Young @youngofteavex @geoffreyyoungfurniture Fraser Bremmer @fraserbremner Murali Bhaskar and to the absolute best team @govettbrewster Zara Stanhope @zara_stanhope Anna Briars @anna_briers Lleah Smith @fermentingknowledges Lauren Harrigan @laurenceliaharrigan With all the install production team and for the amazing support that Elaine Rollins @puka8elaine & Beth Armstrong @betharmstrongdesign gave each week to make the performances possible and the performers feel so well cared for. To Lisa Myeong-Joo whom without none would be possible @lisamyeongjookeighery @eveleighworks for forging the forks with love and Damien Ricketson for making them sing. Always 🖤 galerie allen @galerieallen cassandra bird @cassandrabird.gallery

Final weeks to catch Ross Manning’s Spectra V, 2012 @govettbrewster in Direct Bodily Empathy – Sensing Sound. Spectra V is a suspended kinetic sculpture which imbues the gallery walls with shifting chromatic washes of colour. Both affecting and sensorial, it produces an immersive experience for audiences on a somatic level, playing with ocular perception. Spectra live colour mixes in concert with gravity, like an autonomous musical instrument performing aerial ballet to its own hidden optical soundtrack… Ross Manning Spectra V, 2012 wood, metal, fluorescent tubes, oscillating fans, power boards, power cords, dimensions variable. Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 2012. Image still: Cheska Brown 🙏🙏🙏 @thechartwellproject @rossfmanning #chartwellcollection @milanigallery

Now showing in Direct Bodily Empathy - Sensing Sound until 30 November @govettbrewster Len Lye Wand Dance, 1965/2018 When activated by electrical energy, Wand Dance is one of Len Lye’s most entrancing kinetic installations. Composed of seven dancing 3-metre fibreglass wands topped with orbiting brass bells, the work evolves through choreographed figures of motion. As forms of energy made visible, these ephemeral volumes of light in space reveal the language of acoustics and physics — as underpinned by harmonic waves. Each time a varied frequency is imparted into the sculpture it vibrates in response, revealing a new form. Although Wand Dance is a programmed sculpture, Lye also harnessed the feedback generated when the motors pause or rest within the sequence, using chance and accident to modulate small variations and nuances; a way of amplifying the power of silence after noise. Wand Dance recalls Wind Wand (1996), Lye’s 48-metre kinetic sculpture on Ngāmotu New Plymouth’s Coastal Walkway. While Wind Wand senses weather patterns, bowing in response to atmospheric winds, this installation is enlivened by fluctuating energetic frequencies, using the electrical grid as an artistic collaborator. ‘Bodily empathy’ is Lye’s term for the transfer of elemental energies or patterns of motion. Wand Dance can be considered a conduit between the artist’s somatic memory and our own internal sense of movement — an inner echo. Len Lye Wand Dance, 1965/2018 fibreglass, brass bells, electric motor, wooden base, dimensions variable, duration 7 mins. Len Lye Foundation Collection, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. Wand Dance was developed by the Len Lye Foundation and through the generous community support of Team Zizz. @lenlyefoundation #lenlye @starkwhite

Five days in August… (in pictures)… Another curatorial marathon across two cities including: media, rehearsal, recording, post-production, Gala performance, public performance, install, and 🫠 🌀Busy curators straighten their pre Gala hair (glamorously) in archival storage areas 🌀Mia Salsjö’s A Score for the Len Lye Centre performed by @nzsymphonyorchestra led by conductor Hamish McKeich. The 2025 Ramp Commission supported by the Govett-Brewster Foundation (with 1,400 strong audience). 🌀String players from the NZSO accompanied by the ghost of Len Lye (probably 👻), illuminated by @rossfmanning Spectra V, Chartwell Collection. 🌀Peter Jackson’s recording studio Stella Maris, a converted chapel perched on a cliff overlooking the Moana as part of Park Road Post ✨Artist @miacerasalsjo and Orchestrator Mark Buys 🪄 in the studio (Not pictured: fun exhaustion meltdown and recovery with copious yoga and magnesium)⚡️💫🫠🧘🏼‍♀️

Adrián Villar Rojas: The Language of the Enemy @artsonje_center A mind bending environmental installation across four floors and stairwells where the Art Sonje Center is transformed into a sculptural ecosystem occupied by chimerical more-than-human creatures from an imagined post-apocalyptic future. ‘the entrance is blocked by a mound of earth, walls and columns are stripped to their core. Soil, fire, and plant life expose the institution to the outside world blurring the boundaries between interior and exterior, ecological and institutional.’ Curated by Sunjung Kim 👏👏👏👏

James Bridle Things Said, Things Seen, and Things Done, 2023 Three operational solar panels are engraved with symbols of the wheatsheaf, the poppy, and the calathus (basket) in reference to the benevolent Greek goddess Demeter of harvest and agriculture. Here, instead of extracting power from the fossil fuel grid, solar energy is harvested and redistributed into public programming outcomes as part of the exhibition Manifesto of Spring @asianculturecenter @jamesbridle