Artist Brit Bunkley features Whanganui landscapes in Moscow festival video piece

A still from Brit Bunkley's art video Godzone currently showing in Moscow.

Whanganui artist Brit Bunkley's video artwork Godzone, which includes drone footage and 3D models of Whanganui, has been screening in Moscow.

Godzone was one of just nine works selected for the International Video Art Festival held at the ARTPLAY Design Center in the Russian capital last week.

"It is the first time, that I have been accepted since 2012 when their programme was shown at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art," says Bunkley.

"I then miraculously won the third prize."

Bunkley says he is not sure when the winners for this year will be announced but says it feels like an achievement just to have his work selected.

Known for his work as a sculptor, Bunkley said he started sending his video art to international festivals in 2001 and usually three or four of them are accepted each year.

"My video has several references to Whanganui, including clouds over the Whanganui river from Aramoho by drone, as well as 3D scan animations of 3D models of the Brunswick Road KP factory ruin and the adjacent Matipo Park.

"Ahu Ahu Ohu from the region is also featured."

The blurb for Godzone introduces the colloquial New Zealand to international audiences and explains that the term is derived from Thomas Bracken's 1890 poem.God's Own Country.

The video, which is entered in other competitions, depicts industrial architecture (quaint, but ominous in their decay) vying with striking New Zealand landscapes rendered in virtual 3D.

Actual footage is combined with the 3D alternate reality of flyovers of Solaris-like islands such as a factory ruin that segues into a clip of a NZ park built during the work programmes of the Great Depression - a unique landscape rich in both Ponga fern trees and redwoods, part Jurassic Park and part northern California.

Whanganui audiences are likely to see Godzone when the round of international competitions are over,