We are open Fri-Sun, 11am - 5pm. Read about our Covid-safe planshere.
Opens on Apr 15 until Apr 30, 2023
Downstairs|12
Tom Isaacs
Night Soil, 2022
.
Video, 5min 42s
Night Soil explores the earth as the site of birth and death—a womb and a tomb—through the live burial of the artist inside a purpose-built wooden bed. The live burial references rites of passage with their particular relationship to death and rebirth as well as natural cycles of renewal and transformation. The bed is a space for sleeping—itself a kind of temporary death—but also a place for the conception, birthing, and nursing of infants, and for the care of the sick and dying. We spring from the earth and return to it, fertilising the ground for new life.
Artist profile
Tom Isaacs is a Sydney-based contemporary artist working primarily in the fields of performance and textile art. Tom’s art practice explores themes of mental illness, mortality, and the human condition, and he engages with psychoanalytic theory, philosophy, religious and ritual practices, and art history.
