Sediments of Chora by Julieanna Preston and Curving the Judd by Tim Brennan form a dispersed duet within the wider Rock-a-Bye project—a series of international artist collaborations initiated by Preston.
These two solo works emerged from an iterative process of call and response: shared questions around ancestry, labour, and voiced materiality—each piece shaped by its own geology, lineage, and mode of address. Though filmed continents apart, the videos are bound by echo, ritual, and a kind of lullaby logic: coal and basalt, voice and rocking, memory and earth. These two works stand in dialogue across time zones and terrain—each tracing familial and geological resonances through sound, image, and material presence.
Preston’s video figures a wooden rocking chair she brought with her from the United States to Aotearoa twenty-eight years ago, a chair that comforted her and her daughter. Its lulling motion and creaks are in tune and pace with a spoken word poem that rehearses the first names of her daughter’s maternal and paternal lines. The heavy black basalt rock serves as anchor to what now is a forever home.
Curving the Judd is a video work that draws on Brennan’s paternal lineage—Irish Republican coal miners who migrated to County Durham in the aftermath of the Great Hunger. The title references a mining technique: cutting a curved block, or judd, from the coalface to enable extraction. In this work, “curving” becomes a layered metaphor—an act of excavation, ancestral attunement, and poetic intervention. Through voice, visual rhythm, and material resonance, Curving the Judd honours a legacy of endurance, class struggle, and felt history.
These two solo works—Curving the Judd (Tim Brennan) and Sediments of Chora (Julieanna Preston)—emerged as a collaboration across geographies and generations. Each video stands alone, yet they speak in resonance: coal and basalt, ancestry and breath, labour and lullaby. These paired works explore the ritual, memory, and material legacy of familial lines—through poetic utterance, elemental substance, and acts of care.
Both videos can be viewed HERE.
