The vision of one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most provocative artists and thinkers: the unity of the natural environment and the human imagination, the energy, rhythm and textures of the physical world expressed through clay, words, and music.

SYNOPSIS
Spontaneous Combustion celebrates the legacy of Barry Brickell (1935-2016) and the realisation of his extraordinary dream, Driving Creek Railway & Pottery: a productive pottery with numerous kilns, a bush railway, a native bird and bush sanctuary and a lively creative hub attracting artists from around the globe.

This film is a love-song, a paean to those things that Barry Brickell held dear: the bush, the railway, conversation, song, and art-making in all its varied practices. It reflects the sensual attachment Brickell felt to the land and human form, as expressed in the ceramic sculptures that defined his creativity.

A cinematic montage of historic stills and film from present day Driving Creek, is woven with a spirited, poetic narration by Greg O'Brien. The sumptuous soundtrack performed by Robert Oliver and the Palliser Viols with renowned taonga pūoro player, Mahina-Ina Kingi-Kaui, features compositions by Gillian Karawe Whitehead and Ross Harris.

CREW

BRUCE FOSTER Director, Editor, Director of Photography, Producer
ROBERT OLIVER Musical Director
GREGORY O’BRIEN Creative Producer, Script writer, Narrator
JOHN NEILL Sound Engineer & Mixer (Concerts)
ANGUS WEBB Sound Editor & Mixer
CARLO BORNHOLDT Sound Recording (Driving Creek)
ROB SARKIES Camera operator (Concert)
CHRIS WATSON Camera operator (Concert)
JASON WANG Camera operator (Concert)

MUSICIANS

MAHINA-INA KINGI-KAUI, taonga pūoro
REIDUN TURNER, treble viol
SOPHIA ACHESON, treble viol
ROBERT OLIVER, tenor and bass viol
KAREN FRENCH, bass viol
IMOGEN GRANWAL, bass viol

COMPOSERS (Aotearoa)

GILLIAN KAWARE WHITEHEAD
ROSS HARRIS

SOUNDTRACK

The soundtrack for the film is from this concert, Music and Memory: A Concert for Barry Brickell performed by Robert Oliver and the Palliser Viols with renowned taonga pūoro player, Mahina-Ina Kingi-Kaui.

While this soundtrack for the film provides aural context and structure for sequences of stills and video along a range of themes, two compositions by Dame Gillian Karawe Whitehead are prominently featured for both their performances and their close alignment to Barry's philosophy and values.

Puhake ki te Rangi (“spouting to the skies”) is a homage to the extraordinary world of whales. It has an ethereal beauty, the whale’s voice floats from the resonant instruments, lost and mournful. A strong call from the trumpet-like pūtātara ends the piece, reinforcing Dame Gillian’s message that taonga pūoro are “a sonic link to the past of our country.”

Douglas Lilburn, travelling on the Limited, regards the mountains in the moonlight, deeply resonates with Barry's values regarding his art. Douglas Lilburn (1915–2001), himself a composer, had described an epiphany while travelling on the overnight Wellington to Auckland train, the Limited. At one of the stations, while gazing at Mount Ruapehu in full moonlight, Lilburn realised 'that the world that Mozart lived in was about as remote as the moon, and in no way related to my experience'. He later made a plea for Aotearoa New Zealand to have ‘a music of our own, a living tradition of music created in this country, a music that will satisfy those parts of our being that cannot be satisfied by the music of other nations’. It marked a transition for him from classical forms and instruments to becoming a pioneer of electronic music.

Similarly, Barry's mission was to also develop an indigenous aesthetic, the use of local clays and glazes, local wood firing, and crucially, local forms, or at least an artist's own apprehension and remaking of them. He endlessly researched the history of Aotearoa, culturally, humanly, biologically, and geographically. He sings the landscape and its rough compelling forms in every pot and sculpture he makes.

Thanks to Elizabeth Kerr for references from her review of the concert in: Five Lines

Thanks to David Craig for references from His Own Steam.

MUSIC CREDITS

Fantasia No 3 à 3
Orlando Gibbons

In Nomine à 5
Robert Parsons

In Nomine à 4
Orlando Gibbons

The Image of Melancholy
Antony Holborne

Bonny sweet Robin
Arranged Robert Oliver from Munday

Pavan
Antony Holborne

Puhake ki te Rangi
Gillian Whitehead (2006)

Fortune my foe
Arranged Robert Oliver from Byrd

The Image of Melancholy*
(after Holborne)
Ross Harris (2017)

Fairie Round
Antony Holborne

Douglas Lilburn, travelling on the Limited,
regards the mountains in the moonlight*
Gillian Whitehead (2020)

Browning à 5
Clement Woodcock

Wilsons Wilde
Arranged Robert Oliver

Fantasia No 3 à 3
Orlando Gibbons

Adieu sweet love
Tobias Hume

Ka Waiata
Richard Puanaki

*World premieres

BACKGROUND

In 1966 Barry's sister, Andrea, married Robert Oliver. Over the years the three of them dreamed of the possibility of doing a concert tour at stations along the North Island Main Trunk Line. After Barry died in 2016, and Andrea three years later, Robert twice attempted the tour with his consort of viols, a taonga pūoro player, and Greg O'Brien who would perform Barry's poetry and narrate aspects of his life. Twice the tour was cancelled because of COVID. Robert decided to perform two concerts in 2023, one at Futuna Chapel in Wellington, the other at Te Ngākau Tapu in Porirua.

GREGORY O'BRIEN

Greg has played many crucial roles in this project - adviser, narrator, performer, and as a creative producer. He has been a sounding board for ideas as the film's form evolved during the edit.

Greg was a friend of Barry's, and with David Craig wrote His Own Steam: The work of Barry Brickell (2013). He also curated a collection of Barry's writing, A Barry Brickell Reader – Selected ‘wrertings’, meditations, outbursts, decrees and diversions from the founder of Driving Creek Railway. For the concert at the Futuna Chapel Greg narrated fragments of Barry's life and read excerpts of his poetry. For many years Greg has been a friend of Robert Oliver and Andrea Brickell, too, and a big fan of their performances of precolonial music.

Greg is a prolific writer and curator. He is a finalist for the 2024 Ockham Awards with his book about Don Binney, Flight Path. Recently, he curated Always Song in the Water, an exhibition of art of the Pacific, held at the New Zealand Maritime Museum.

STILLS PHOTOGRAPHY

The film is a dense weave of historical photographs from the extensive Driving Creek archive, photographs by Haru Sameshima from around 2012 and video shot over the last two years.

When Barry Brickell began potting at Coromandel, he became a magnet to artists, including many of our finest documetary photographers. The film is particularly indebted to Gil Hanly and Haru Sameshima, and to the late Marti Friedlander, Ans Westra and Steve Rumsey. Everyone who went to DCR, it seemed, carried a camera. There are numerous photos of anonymous origin, too.

Barry studied geology and was very drawn to the brooding mountains of the North Island Volcanic Plateau. The photograph of Ngauruhoe erupting in 1926 is by Charles Frederick Newham, who also happened to be the cinematographer for this country’s first dramatic feature film, Hinemoana.

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

HARU SAMESHIMA
STEVE RUMSEY (images courtesy Brian Rumsey)
GIL HANLY
MARTI FRIEDLANDER
ANS WESTRA (images courtesy of Suite Tirohanga)
HOWARD WILLIAMS (images courtesy of NZ Railway & Locomotive Society)
LESLIE ADKIN (images courtesy of Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa)
CHARLES FREDRICK NEWHAM (image courtesy of Alexander Turnbull Library)
W.W. STEWART (images courtesy of NZ Railway & Locomotive Society)
DERECK CROSS (images courtesy of NZ Railway & Locomotive Society)
KELVIN HYNES (images courtesy of Rod McLeod)
ANONYMOUS

TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE

DANIEL BATKIN-SMITH

DRIVING CREEK POTTERS

MARAMA HANNAH
SAM IRELAND
RICCARDO SCOTT

DRIVING CREEK ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

PHOEBE RYDE
CHRIS ELLIS
ANNEKE BORREN
MIMI AMAR
RONALD BOERSEN

CONTRIBUTING POTTERS

WAILIN ELLIOT
PHIL WOLFE
CHRIS INGRAM
BRONWYNE CORNISH