Double voyage

Shaun Gladwell is a Sydney born/ London based video artist who investigates the physical body engaged in sub-cultural activities within various everyday urban environments. Drawing upon the ideas of situationism and Michel de Certeau's seminal text 'The practice of everyday life' 1980, Gladwell subverts underlying power structures by appropriating developed spaces through performance.

'Double voyage' is a synchronised two channel video work especially commissioned and locally produced for the 27th Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil, 2006. Its concept originated with Gladwell seeking to establish an intercity dialogue between the artist's hometown of Sydney and São Paulo, through their corresponding skateboarding and transsexual scenes.

The 'double portrait' presents two individuals in corporeal states of transformation or otherness; the disabled professional skater Oggy de Souza and the transvestite erotic dancer Grace O'Hara. De Souza amazingly skates in a handstand position inside the 'imposing' Oscar Lucas Nogueira Garcez Pavillion at Oscar Niemeyer's Ibirapuera Park. O'Hara concurrently pole dances in a bikini on stage at a strip club to music by pop star Beyonce. The dual inverted imagery demonstrates the conceptual and poetic qualities of balance, which is a subtext throughout Gladwell's video work (Messham-Muir, 2008).