Free Fall

By Carrie Miller

Free Fall is a curated series of live art installations in a glass cube at a venue that pays homage to Andy Warhol’s Factory. And in the spirit of that space, you will find some pretty weird happenings by some of Sydney’s most interesting contemporary artists at the Oxford Art Factory.

John Douglas, in collaboration with Naomi Oliver, is performing one of the most intense endurance pieces of the series. The Blood of Arachne involves Oliver assuming the mythical persona of Arachne – a woman in Greek myth, gifted in the art of weaving, turned into a spider by the Goddess Athena.

Douglas, hermetically sheathed in a red body suit, will be helpless to Oliver inside the cube, itself transformed into a blood red chamber, and will be gradually weaved into the space until he is entirely enmeshed in its walls. The work is a visual interpretation of the life-threatening kidney disease the artist suffers from – both in terms of what happens to the blood capillaries inside his failing organs, as well as the way he is gradually being trapped by his own body.

Douglas’s performances are intense, mesmerising and uncomfortable confrontations on the limits of his body and ultimately our own.

Until 20 & 21 July

Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst

www.oxfordartfactory.com/freefall