Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture

Situated in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at Monash University Caufield Campus as a visiting Artist for the Woman in Research Project 2008, I explored a number of studio-based and research proposals for three weeks. The intention was to develop a proposal(s) for a new or ongoing work with either: The Glass Studio, The Artist-book Studio and/or the Wider Faculty by attracting an ARC Grant. The potentials were of varying degress of promise...cogent on funding...disrupted by the merger of the Faculty and threatened by budget-cuts and change of management... Working with both freedom and contraint, and feeling a sense of placement and displacement within the Faculty, I could only do what I did best. I looked for ways to interweave a multitude of current projects within the cultural fabric of an organisation in flux, and seek out opportunities for furthering new ideas.

Academic Research Cluster proposals

GRAVITY-RELATED ARTS AND SPACE PERFORMANCE (GASP) GASP proposes research at the unique disciplinary junctures of art, design, human factors, human movement, bio-mimetics, architectures (real and virtual), hyperbaris, astrobiology, psychology, and spatial adaptation research.

  • 1G = Force of gravity g = 9,81m/s²
  • 0G = Zero gravity
  • 1/xG = Partial gravity (Mars, Moon...)

Studio-based proposals

  • Screen-based Hydrotherapy Tank
  • Brazilian Plumber Performance
  • Water-proof Pillow book
  • Libraries for Extreme Spaces – outer Space and Undersea
  • Mini Biosphere Cultures for Sub Culture/Atlantica
  • Underwater tent – self-contained inflatable retreats
  • Seal Ladies Breathing Apparatus

...as Kira O'Reilly explains in her post Aer: online exhibition and emergent Seal Ladies, Friday, October 19th, 2007

The artists featured in this greenmuseum.org Aer project look critically at the issue of air quality and use various methods to raise awareness of the issue among the public. Because air is invisible, artists are faced with the challenge of making the intangible real. Because air pollution is a silent killer, artists are challenged to give a voice to the body’s dependence on clean air. Most of the featured projects blur the line between art and activism, and all the artists are changing public understanding of the air around us, questioning accepted norms of ownership of and responsibility to the air we must breathe to live. http://www.greenmuseum.org/c/aer/ (archived) The Australia artist Sarah Jane Pell recently approached me about remaking and preforming a work of hers called Interdepend. Sarah has set up a site dedicated to our collaboration on this revisit to interdepend, which we aim to realise and exhibit in 2008. Sometime ago now we discussed the myths of the selkie, the seal women who shed their seal coats and skins to walk and pass amongst human.The transmogrification between human and seal in the shallows of the seal haunted waters articulates wonderful ideas of metamorphosis that have been embedded in many cultures for centuaries and yet indicate contemporary notions of transformation and liminal embodiments, alterities and terrors via technologies and sciences. They suggest the shakey boundaries and taxonomies that our biosciences posit and action in chimerical lifes and hybrid actuations.

Monash Art Forums 2008

Monash University, Lunchtime Art Lecture 2008

TuesdayTalks, Guest Lecture March 4 G.104

Sarah Jane Pell talks on her practice as one of the resident artists participating in the Monash fine arts 2008 woman in research project. Pell introduces a series of performance research engagements intermeshing fine arts and performance with commercial diving and live art. Discussions include exploration into the aesthetics of care and operation of human performance, behaviour and survival in extreme spaces including undersea and in outer space.

Monash University, Art Design Faculty 2008

TuesdayTalks, Forum March 11 G.104

Panel discussion: The Aesthetics of Care and Operation in Contemporary Performance Praxis and the potentials this conjures for new architectures. Panel includes: Sarah Jane Pell, Domenico deClario, Kit Wise and Jill Orr. Recorded for the ARC Women in Research Project.