Rudderless

Artists

Dr Rebekah Pryor

Melissa O’Rourke

Women at sea

This exhibition is an experiment in process and possibility. Combining video and theatre, Pryor and O’Rourke play with Proto-Renaissance artworks of women at sea to understand how inherited cultural motifs and patterns of movement persist to shape personal and political realities.  

Starting with Giotto’s Mary Magdalene’s Voyage to Marseille (1320s), the artists play with costume, characterisation and performance. Through video, projection and theatrical imaginings, they insert themselves into the image as a way to interpret and embody histories, however real or imagined.  

Rudderless is about what can happen when artistic processes of production are navigated intuitively, without end in sight.  

Image  

Melissa O’Rourke and Rebekah Pryor, Untitled (After Giotto), 2023, video still 1.