Tom Isaacs, Pietà, 2022. Video documentation by Motel Picture Company.
Pietà is a performance art piece of variable length in which the artist explores different positions and poses with a long piece of blue felt. The colour blue has long held spiritual significance for different religious traditions thanks to its association with the vast expanse of sky and the unfathomable depths of the ocean. Blue is also commonly associated with sadness and depression, typified by the expression: ‘feeling blue’. On a personal level Pietà combines these two themes, mental health and spirituality, to evoke a desire for healing or resurrection from an experience of depression which feels deathly.
This work is discussed in more detail in my thesis which is available online through the University of Sydney website: ‘Sacrificial Bodies: Body Art, Ritual and the Problem of Alienation’.
An earlier version of Pietà was exhibited in ‘BLUE’, a Blue Mountains Cultural Centre Exposé Program exhibition curated by Beata Geyer, at the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre from 1 Aug – 20 Sept 2020.
Tom Isaacs, Pietà, 2020. Video documentation by Danica Knezevic.
1-4: Video stills from documentation of live performance.
5-7: Installation view, ‘BLUE’, Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, Katoomba NSW curated by Beata Geyer. Photographs by Silversalt Photography. Also pictured: Blue by Rebecca Waterstone.
Tom Isaacs 