WET SOCIAL SCULPTURE

Stella Brennan

Sept 16 - Oct 13, 2005
Gallery One

Soothe your senses with Water Light and Sound

Immerse yourself in liquid tranquility when you join us at St Paul St for Stella Brennan’s new exhibition Wet Social Sculpture which runs until 13 October. The Auckland based artist, writer and curator, Brennan has installed a luxury eight-seater spa pool with built in sound and lighting and she is inviting gallery visitors to soak in it.

The spa pool is a therapeutic, immersive environment offering a particular kind of interactive experience to gallery visitors. Soothing whale song and coloured lighting lets the visitor personalize the mood, allowing for a choice of colour to dance over illuminated arcs of water.

Stella Brennan describes the experience in her catalogue essay as:

More intimate than the swimming pool, with no callisthenic alibi, the spa epitomizes certain  characteristics of domesticated water. The spa is a pleasure enabled by electricity and chemistry and facilitated by modern materials, by coatings, fibreglass, by insulating foams and ozone generators. It is the leisure class in a capsule, cocktail in hand.

The exhibition is completed by a large-scale projection re-presenting an abstract sequence from the classic movie Altered States (1980) – a minute of starbursts, protoplasm, seething cells and opalescent clouds.

The artist is keen to encourage the gallery visitor to actively participate in Wet Social Sculpture and has provided a changing room, shower facilities and sumptuous bathrobes for their use. All they need to bring is a swimsuit and towel.