Composition with RNZAF No. 3 Squadron during Exercise BLACKBIRD

Composition with RNZAF No. 3 Squadron during Exercise BLACKBIRD

Blackbird is a complex and technically challenging work, but also a mediative treat. Alongside air force crew, Alex Monteith filmed three rescue helicopters on a training exercise in a remote alpine region in Te Waipounamu, the South Island of Aotearoa. Flying simultaneously, each helicopter was installed with an onboard video camera.

The work was designed as a three-screen projection to reach from ceiling to floor in large gallery spaces. Flying high above black mountains, rusty valleys, curling rivers, snowy patches, lowly clouds, it is unclear at first that one screen is not simply a replication of the next, a device to intensify the impact of the trepidatious rescues by helicopters. It is only when looking more closely that a tightly controlled formation is found: the first helicopter has the second trailing away in the middle distance, with the third further away again, a small distant creature-like form. This is repeated, the second showing the third, the third seemingly isolated in an infinite regress over challenging wilderness. The possible discomfort of the vertiginous images shot high above this dark mountainous land are also extraordinarily beautiful. The incessant soundscape, the scratchy, imperfect radio communications between pilots, rather than jarring, or inducing anxiety, acts as a mediative support, a sense of security.

Balancing conflicting energies is a technique that runs through Alex’s body of work. Her long, prosaic titles and list of materials belie the final beauty and poeticism of the finished work. It is a way of bounding her spectacular imagery, these god-like perspectives, in the workaday toil of its production.

— Jan Bryant, 2023