Art in Strange Places

A postcard from Brick Bay Sculpture Trail, Matakana.

The best adventures are always the ones that aren’t planned. When we awoke to bright sunshine instead of the forecast rain yesterday, I couldn’t wait to seize the chance get outside. I’m just about to start another two week stretch at work, and especially when the days are as short as they are now, it can seem as though my whole life is spent inside the hospital.

We decided upon the Sculpture Trail because it allowed us to bring Asterix along. He was the only dog there as it happened, and quite bemused by the whole experience! Entranced by strange noises, mistrustful of the follies, bewildered by having to keep stopping and starting, he was so worn out by it all that he fell asleep in the car home and slept soundly all evening.

I wasn’t quite sure whether it was the right time of year to visit, especially as the unexpected sunshine gave way to heavy clouds, but when we arrived we discovered you could get takeaway mulled wine, and because I don’t get to do mulled wine at Christmas anymore this was the best kind of surprise.

The trail weaves over undulating land, circling around lakes, dropping down into native bush and twisting up high into a Kauri canopy. There is all kind of art on show, from the Bauhaus aesthetic to installations reminiscent of Banksy.

I was enchanted by all of the sound installations, but the most meaningful to me was Olivia Webb’s Miserere Mei. We heard it long before we reached it, snatches of music floating tantalisingly up and out of the bush. Finally we came upon small path leading down into a grove made amphitheatre by a circle of speakers high up in the trees. I captured a little of the experience on film to share with you, but I don’t know that I am capable of finding the words to explain how deeply it moved me. The Miserere is the most chillingly beautiful piece of choral music that I know, a nine-part piece that rises in an impossible solo treble and falls in a cascade of rapture. It has been part of my life ever since I can remember, passed down to me by my parents, who I believe first discovered it during Evensong. It is sung on Ash Wednesday as part of that service every year in Oxford and Cambridge. When we lived in France pre-internet-era we would tune into longwave radio to catch the Lent service on the BBC, in my ten years in Cambridge I attended as many live renditions as I could. I knew it long before I thought critically about religion and I would encourage you to listen to it regardless of faith or beliefs. To unexpectedly come across it playing here, deep in the New Zealand bush that has captured my heart, with my love at my side (and Asterix panting loudly at our feet), with my childhood, University and current selves suddenly colliding, was an almost transcendental experience.