I tried to be Ophelia
Sheffield
2004
The Story of Ophelia.....
Ophelia is a female character in Shakespeare's play "Hamlet". She is Hamlet's love interest and after he turns mentally ill and rejects her; she falls in a river (when she is picking flowers) and does not attempt to save herself from drowning.
John William Waterhouse was a Romantic Painter who depicted Ophelia in several paintings. In order to recreate the scene of Ophelia in the water, he paid a model to lay in a bath for several hours at a time.
In 2002 I started a 21st Centuary self-portrait project about "Trying to be Ophelia..." To begin with I took photos of myself in the bath. Then I hand-held a video camera whilst trying to enter a Yorkshire river in March- I found it so cold in the water that my body reacted by making really embarrassing gasping noises!
Finally, I decided that if I actually was to lay in an English river, I would need to wear a dry suit. With this costume I managed to stay under for ten minutes. When I stood up my head hurt with the cold and I could not hear properly. Tim Blundell Jones recorded this performance. I projected this video onto a dark room floor without any sounds so that visitors to the exhibition could stand around and look down at the projected image of me lying in a river.
These performances explored what it must have felt like to be Ophelia or the model for Waterhouse's painting. These women were brave but maybe slightly mad. My video expresses our interest in death and suisuides but in a slightly amusing way.