the voyage | Alice

by Christoper Mike & Vincenzo Muratore

As a collaboration between a sculptor and a painter we decided to create a visual fusion between the two disciplines. The imagined borders between sculpture and painting turned out to be surprisingly porous and the result of our week was a sculptural painting. The theme we adopted for our piece was the tragic sinking of the SS Alice on the River Thames in 1878 with the loss of 700 plus lives. We chose this theme as we were creating our piece just a few hundred metres away from the scene of the accident.

As the process evolved, we discovered that a good creative collaboration is basically a series of extremely polite arguments between people who regard each other with mutual respect. Only through the process of democratic debate can any real progress be made. Very few creators ever get to do this, typically preferring instead to work in isolation. A collaborative process challenges our status quo and forces us to think and act differently. It takes us outside our familiar norms and zones of comfort. Based on our experience, we would strongly recommend it.

The finished work generated a good deal of local interest, possibly down to the subject matter we chose but also because it is so unusual. We were delighted to see that Yuliya Krylova chose to respond to our work in her opening performance. We will definitely be doing more in this style.