Odyssey - Live ArtFrom Victoria Quay into the Western Australia Martime Museum
Part of the exhibition Walking with Water
Walking with Water was one part of a submission for a PhD Visual Arts submitted to Edith Cowan University examined by Stelarc, Assoc. Prof. Shannon Bell, and Dr. Mark Minchinton.
The retrospective exhibition included both media performance screenings and installed artifacts from six aquatic-inspired performances including two works from the UnderCurrent series, the highly evocative
Hydrophilia ; the paired works of Second Nature Second Skin and Revolution and
the 100 invited guests at the Opening night were also given a preview of a live performance Odyssey. On the occassion of her defence, the artist performed Odyssey as a parting gesture - a swan song from the mouth of the Swan River -
demonstrating the realities of live art performance - testing for the first time - a fully-enclosed wearable hand-made life-support system with all the dramas and problem-solving that come with the inherent risks posed.
The artist walked breathing from the system from the ocean harbour waters and along the Submarine slip way of
Victoria Quay during a wild thunderstorm with crews relaying footage of her journey to an appreciative audience welcoming her inside the museum. Once the apparatus was removed, Pell stood before her peers and examiners,
soaking wet, breathless and thoroughly delighted to defend the submission of 'Aquabatics as New Works of Live Art' as a PhD Visual Arts to Edith Cowan University.
Discussion
The image of the ‘sub’ human biotech fission of the re-breather/hood was monstrous. The lime carbonate scrubber was in the shape of a heart. The dual bellows were in the shape of human lungs. The one-way inhalation and exhalation ports were fashioned with ribbed silicone tubing to reference the trachea. These ports joined the neck dam of a soft, inflatable hyperbaric hood filled with saline solution and the artists head. The life-support system was designed to place the body in-between as a life form of ubiquitous status. Once the prototype breathing apparatus had been designed and constructed, the critical edge of the performance act, action or activism, was cogent on publicly road testing the interface, and submerging the oral nasal cavities, to test the body response. By my own design, I failed. By my own design, the closed-loop life support system was compromised...and so the performance began!
"Walking With Water offered a retrospective of work by performance and installation artist Sarah-Jane Pell, in what she calls “aquabatics.” Although she draws on the poetic and performative potential suggested by aquatic environments, her body of work is best described as an aestheticisation of life support systems. The body in water is dialectical, at once in communion with and conflict with water. Aquatic performance offers the possibility of an ecstatic release into the enveloping weightlessness of an azure world, yet nevertheless the body gags in the face of this fantasy, as the need for oxygen reasserts itself. - Dr. Jonathan Marshall, Realtime 2005
Reviews
Marshall, J., (2005) The Art of Life Support, Real Time & On Screen Vol68, Aug/Sep 2005, p.48
Britton, S., (2005) uncollectable artist? New Work ‘Aquabatics’ Sarah Jane Pell, Artlink Australia, Vol25 No.3, p.58.
Ed. (2005) Walking with Water, Intersector WA Public Sector Magazine, Vol11, No.6, 1 July 2005 p.26.
English, A. (2005) Artnotes WA: Sarah Jane Pell, Art Monthly Australia, No.180 June 2005 p.51.
