2 Divine
Press Play to view with Soundtrack from Exhibition - Suellen Symons, Megaphone Acoustic Design, Steve Wishart vocals
Jeanne d’Arc and Mary MacKillop
To commemorate 1995 International Women’s Year, I made a series about two women who became saints (I think Mary hadn’t quite yet). I wanted to create a theatre in the round and so recorded an original musical score with sound effects in a progression about the story of Joan of Arc, the alternative version which you can read about in the catalogue included on this website in 2 Divine.
In the early 90’s I had been resident at the Art Gallery of NSW atelier in Paris and had become obsessed by the story of Joan of Arc. I was researching in the libraries and drawing all day and night in the studio. I came back to Sydney after an extended stay in Europe for two years (started off with a Visual Arts Board grant) and then developed a completely opposite viewpoint after being led to an alternative history of Joan by my Alliance Française teacher I visited on my return “all French” (at least speaking better French than when I left and dressed as though I was a French woman) who showed me proof Joan had not been burnt at the stake, that she continued to fight for the Dauphin and I realised that it was quite shocking to think of an alternative narrative for Joan having been almost totally brainwashed into the orthodox version in Paris. However, once I found more proof myself in research, I leapt off this precipice without looking back.
Mary MacKillop came along for the ride as someone who was within the constraints on women at the time a very unorthodox person herself and it gave the narrative an Australian aspect as well. I thought about and visualised the lives of these two extraordinary women who didn’t let their gender, or the bureaucracy stand in their way of their achievement.
The fantastic thing about making this kind of work is creating complete casts of characters, finding the authentic clothing they wore and the settings they lived and worked in all within Sydney.
Here I have a cast of amateur actors, friends or people I knew, horses, armour and costumes, some props I made, daughters of friends and a professional sound engineer as well as an international singer in a professional sound recording studio.
The work is printed in Cibachrome and silver gelatine which is a contrast I have only done in this one exhibition- colour and black and white together. The sound meanders around the work and because I recorded real French bells tolling it weaves it’s magic in an effortless unification of all the disparate aspects of this mis-en-scenes.
