The Tristan Project by Bill Viola is currently on display at the Art Gallery of NSW. The video work was made originally to accompany a performance of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde first presented at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.
Aside from the exhibition on display at the Art Gallery of NSW, there are two works on display at the St Saviour’s Church in Redfern; Fire Woman and Tristan’s Ascension.
They are epic works of sound and slow motion acts of nature. With the human body both resilient and submissive in the face of walls of fire and mountainous waterfalls. We are told that:
“Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde is the story of a love so profound that it cannot be contained in the material bodies of the lovers. In order to fully realise their love, Tristan and Isolde must ultimately transcend life itself.”
In its location in a small unassuming church in Redfern, the work becomes like a contemporary stained glass window; a window into a deeply spiritual place and is affecting in a deeply primal manner and we recommend you take a look at it while it is still showing. It is on every night from 6:30pm-10pm until May 17.
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