Daniel Jewesbury : The Death of Venus

Production still, 2023. Digital transfer of 16mm film.

The Death of Venus is a project that will first be shown as a film installation, part of a solo exhibition at Röda Sten Konsthall in Gothenburg, between February and May 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.

Production stills, 2023. Digital transfer of 16mm film.

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 want to create an artwork that captures the desire to be more than what one seems to be.

Production stills, 2023. Digital transfer of 16mm film.

The (ungraded) images shown on this page are stills from test shoots, using 16mm film, in the lagoons that lie at the top of the Adriatic Sea, between Trieste and Venice. These ‘waterscapes’ 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.

Production stills, 2023. Digital transfer of 16mm film.

The finished project will be an immersive environment, using multiple projections and audio channels and some sculptural elements. It will incorporate 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 the material shot in the lagoons and around the rivers and islands of Gothenburg. All this footage will be overlaid and inter-cut during the editing. The accomapanying multichannel audio track features recordings specially made for the project by organist Joel Speerstra and free jazz drummer Peeter Uuskyla. The project features no language whatsoever, either spoken or written.

Work in progress, 2025. Collage / stop-motion animation. Right-click / cmd-click to open the image in a new tab.