Writ­ten by Nadia Free­man

Wel­ling­ton’s new­est and poten­tially first digit­al art space opened this month, and I am deeply appre­ci­at­ive of the entre­pren­eur­i­al spir­it of Shan­non Bros­na­han Ing­lis and Delainy Jamahl. In an era when invest­ment in the arts is dwind­ling, launch­ing a ven­ture of this scale and qual­ity is inspir­ing. Ini­ti­at­ives like this infuse new energy into a city and make me proud to call Te Whan­ganui-a-Tara home.

The Grid is cur­rently run­ning a two-month tri­al fea­tur­ing three exhib­i­tions by loc­al digit­al artists and com­posers. The inaug­ur­al exhib­i­tion, “Rivers of Wind” by Delainy Jamahl, is on dis­play until July 28th and includes ori­gin­al music by Rhi­an Shee­han and Ed Zuc­collo.

This new enter­prise is loc­ated in Wellington’s CBD on Hain­ing Street.  To vis­it, you need to book a tick­et for a spe­cif­ic time slot, but you’re free to come and go with­in your allot­ted peri­od. There’s no pres­sure to leave if you exceed your time.

“Rivers of Wind” is a trib­ute to Wellington’s notori­ous wind. As the win­di­est city in the world, embra­cing the wind’s beauty rather than res­ist­ing it is a refresh­ing per­spect­ive. Delainy Jamahl has trans­formed eight years of weath­er data from Wel­ling­ton Air­port into a stun­ning dis­play of mov­ing digit­al art.

The exhib­i­tion space includes a small side room with inter­act­ive LED pan­els that explore Delainy’s con­cepts in depth. One pan­el is moun­ted on rails and can be moved side­ways, allow­ing view­ers to see dif­fer­ent sec­tions of a lar­ger image, akin to a mov­ing win­dow. The ingenu­ity of this setup is impress­ive and provides a unique, close-up view of the art­work.

The main exhib­i­tion room is a spa­cious, square area sur­roun­ded by pro­ject­or screens. It fea­tures cush­ions and a small bench for seat­ing, ensur­ing that vis­it­ors can com­fort­ably view the art from any pos­i­tion. The atmo­sphere was calm, with vis­it­ors quietly enjoy­ing the exper­i­ence without dis­turb­ing oth­ers.

“Rivers of Wind” is both lit­er­ally and meta­phor­ic­ally breath­tak­ing. Delainy has visu­al­ized eight years of wind data from Wel­ling­ton Air­port with thou­sands of three-dimen­sion­al lines that rep­res­ent wind speed, dir­ec­tion, gusts, and tem­per­at­ure. The data is dis­played at the top left of the images, allow­ing those inter­ested in the sci­ence to explore the details. Per­son­ally, I found lying back and immers­ing myself in the exper­i­ence, accom­pan­ied by the beau­ti­ful son­ic land­scape, to be deeply sat­is­fy­ing. The stun­ning visu­al and aud­it­ory exper­i­ence was truly awe-inspir­ing.

The entire piece lasts 48 minutes, but it’s so cap­tiv­at­ing that time seems to fly by. I could have stayed for hours and will cer­tainly return. I’m eagerly anti­cip­at­ing the next two exhib­i­tions and am hope­ful that The Grid will become a per­man­ent fix­ture in Wel­ling­ton, offer­ing a must-see exper­i­ence for vis­it­ors to our city.

The Grid is open Tues to Sun from 11am until 8/9pm from now until the 1st of Septem­ber

Rivers of Wind is run­ning until July 28th.

Fol­low­ing exhib­i­tions will be

The Art of Black Grace: 1 Aug until 4 Aug (by Neil Ieremia) and

Nowadeus: from 7 Aug until 1 Sep (by Tim Christie & The Grid).

Book your vis­it at https://www.thegridartspace.co.nz/

Silhouettes of three people on chairs in front of large projected image of digital animation called Rivers of Wind