Daniel Jewesbury : The Death of Venus

Installation details, Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, February 2026. Photos by Andrej Lamut. Click to expand images.

Click here to open an excerpt of the work in Vimeo.

The Death of Venus is a project first shown as a film installation, part of a solo exhibition at Röda Sten Konsthall in Gothenburg, between February and April 2026. It developed out of research that was part of my Looking at the Woman in a Bomb Blast project, specifically, into the mythological figure of Hermaphroditos, who originates in Ancient Greece, but who was reimagined in Rome and again much later in the European Renaissance. This figure came into the Bomb Blast project at a late stage, but I very quickly began to develop new questions around it.

Installation details, Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, February 2026. Photos by Andrej Lamut. Click to expand images.

With this work, I’m trying to find an artistic form that expresses the fantasy of escaping the confines of our bodies and our selves. Our bodies are defined every day by the looks of others, racialised and gendered. As a result they are often strange or even foreign to us, unable to ‘represent’ the complications or contradictions of our sense of our self. As someone with a biracial background I’m used to being defined by others in a way that doesn’t fit with my knowledge of myself. The gendered body is misread in even more complex ways. Sexuality and gender are so often confused or entangled, and the body can be a contradictory site for its inhabitant. I wanted to create an artwork that captures the desire to be more than what one seems to be.

Installation details, Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, February 2026. Photos by Andrej Lamut. Click to expand images.

The three large projection screens in the installation are made from multiple layers of window and mirror glass, often cracked or broken, combined with pieces of white poplin cotton and tracing paper. These assemblages rest on specially constructed wooden racks, which resemble traditional glass racks built from pallets. The panes of glass have been treated with different paints to make them reflect the projected image to varying degrees, but the layers of double- and triple-glazing make the image shimmer and repeat; areas of unpainted mirror also throw the image to opposite walls or screens, producing additional, disorientating 'ghost' images. The result, across the three screens and the exhibition space, is a fragmented image-ensemble that constantly circulates around the viewer.

Because of the spatial design of the installation, furthermore, all three screens can never be seen at once: the viewer has to orientate themselves constantly in relation to the image. In the space where the viewers sit between the three screens, large rectangular stones are also spread around the space.

Screengrabs from the edit, showing the three screens side-by-side. Click to expand images.

The work incorporates various kinds of imagery: material filmed with a number of performers, focused on fragments of gesture and movement perhaps reminiscent of classical statuary; a section of filmed collage and stop-motion elements which also re-appropriate elements of ancient myth; and material shot in the lagoons of north-east Italy and around the rivers and islands of Gothenburg. All this footage has been overlaid and inter-cut during the editing to create a kind of fantastical ‘third space’. The accompanying four-channel audio soundtrack is edited from recordings specially made for the project. These feature two musicians. Organist Joel Speerstra plays the North German Baroque Organ built by Gothenburg University at Örgryte nya kyrka in Gothenburg. He plays using a device for regulating the wind pressure in the organ, which was built as part of his earlier research project. The drums are played by free jazz drummer Peeter Uuskyla, who has performed and recorded for over 50 years with artists including Peter Brözmann, Bengt ‘Frippe’ Nordström, and Biggi Vinkeloe.

Screengrabs from the edit, showing the three screens side-by-side. Click to expand images.

The lagoons that lie at the top of the Adriatic Sea, between Trieste and Venice, are precarious, uncertain spaces, where freshwater mingles with seawater, delicate ecosystems supporting endangered species of flora and fauna. Even a slight imbalancing of the natural system that feeds them would leave them either as stagnant ponds, or inundated and incorporated into the sea. As sea levels rise, these lagoons are coming under sustained stress. I started filming the project here, in 2023 and 2024, because I wanted to capture these places in particular weather conditions. I’ve also worked on this project during a residency at Villa San Michele, on Capri, and in Gothenburg.