Of Seas and Silence

‘Of Seas and Silence’

Working across the disciplines of photography, dance, theatre, and moving image, this project is a collaborative partnership to create a short film. Our film explores emotions and metaphors of isolation, connection and embodiment of place in response to experiencing a global pandemic. Port Phillip Bay is a central reference point as a place of belonging and contemplation.

Using poetic visual language, we seek to evoke the ephemeral texture of this period. Cathy Henenberg is a photographic artist who has exhibited regularly at the Carlisle St Art Space and had numerous photographic exhibitions focusing on both local and universal themes; Wendy Smith, is a dancer, and somatic practitioner, who taught at Melbourne University for over 20 years; and Lynn-Maree Milburn is an acclaimed independent Melbourne filmmaker (director, writer, editor and producer). The impetus for this project stems from Cathy Henenberg’s photographic series ‘I voyaged quite alone in the silence of this magic sea,’ exhibited at Brightspace Gallery in May 2022. https://www.brightspace.com.au

Our new multidisciplinary project evolved from still photography and will now be translated into the medium of film and the moving image. By working with dancers, this new work brings the figurative and physical elements of human experience back into central focus. The pandemic reminded us of the criticality of touch, while simultaneously requiring us to keep at a social distance from one another. Through this transformational upheaval, we have come to appreciate, as social beings, how vital our need for both inter-personal engagement and physical movement is for us. We are very pleased to collaborate with Michelle Heaven, an accomplished Victorian based dancer and choreographer.