Holiwater: Installation and performances

Media Release

15 September 2009

Holiwater: Installation and performances

19 September – 4 October 2009
 

Holiwater, a two-week installation embracing photography and film, classical Baul singing, electronic music, and breathtaking live performances, opens at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery this month.

Born from the Ganges river of India, theHoliwater Project’s ambition is to inform and inspire positive action to stop the world’s water crisis turning to catastrophe.

The Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth is the sole host for theHoliwater performances in New Zealand on 2 and 3 October.

A collaboration between New Zealand filmmaker Andrei Jewell and international musicians, theHoliwater Project entertains and engages on both an arts and action level across world-wide audiences.

The installation of film, photography and music culminates at the Gallery, on Friday 2 and Saturday 3 October, with captivating public performances conceived to bring the experience of the river to the audience. Indian Baul singers will perform accompanied by live percussion and electronic music beds, within an environment of reflective video projection.

Holiwatercurator and Govett-Brewster Art Gallery Director Rhana Devenport says the Project evokes questions relevant to all of us. “With water quality an ever growing concern in New Zealand and Taranaki,Holiwater’sfocus on this global issue through traditional mystic singing, contemporary sound and visual environments is indeed important and timely in focusing our senses and awareness on this issue.”

Holiwater filmmaker Andrei Jewell says that as a photographer and video artist he was inspired by the music of the Indian landscape and while he set out recording many great classical musicians he found himself preoccupied documenting two wandering Baul musicians on a pilgrimage along the Ganges river banks.

Jewell explains: “The Bauls worship the river through their music, they are mystics who see the river as a living deity. I noticed their reaction to the vast changes that had occurred to the river itself over a significant period of their lives. The river revealed many things that shape our modern world…its rhythms, its beauty, its people, its meaning for humanity and, sadly, its rapid deterioration in the face of neglect and misunderstanding…”

Since the turn of the millennium, TheHoliwater Project has gathered together international artists – filming their music and performance – to give voice to the Ganges, her plight, and to focus attention on the sustainable management of water globally. This is the ninth year the project has partnered with regional and international organisations working with water and local communities.

“The mission is global.Holiwater is a personal portrait of India’s most sacred river.

It is an attempt at revealing her mystery and the extent of her demise – given that her condition shows so vividly the vulnerability of the Earth’s limited fresh water supplies in an uncertain age marked by rapid climate change,” says Jewell.

Also showing at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery this spring isChina in four seasons: Guo Fengyi from 12 September to 29 November,Judith Wright: Conversations from 19 September to 29 November andNalini Malani from 10 October to 29 November.

Image:Mirror World XI, Nahagar Kund, Jaipur, India 2007

ENDS

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