Steph Goodger

Epic entertainments were the fashion in Nineteenth Century London.  Sadler’s Wells Theatre, as a part of the cult of immensity, created the Aquatic Theatre (1804), to hold 40,000 cubic feet of water, essentially for the re-enactment of Nelson’s naval victories. 

‘A mighty book requires a mighty theme…’   

Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851) is the subject for my version of an Aquatic Theatre. Contained within the tank are enactments of scenes, cataclysmic impacts between the forces above and below the water. The combat crosses back and forth over the seam between the two worlds.

The inevitable downfall of pride simultaneously reveals the fragility of the human built machine, as Moby Dick, a giant force of seemingly of supernatural proportions, destroys it at will.

‘…In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his fatal pride…’

‘…the solid white buttress of his (Moby Dick) forehead smote the ship’s starboard bow, till men and timbers reeled.’

‘…Whom call you Moby Dick?  A very white, and famous, and most deadly immortal monster…’

When he does not refer to white directly, Melville repeatedly describes a cold, sepulchral pallor or semi-opacity. It features often as an omen of tragedy or destruction.  I have attempted to convey this quality in the painting, of something simultaneously repelling and alluring.
 
‘…A vast pulpy mass (a squid), furlongs long in length and breadth, of a glancing cream-colour…’

‘…The glittering mouth yawned beneath the boat like an open-doored marble tomb…’

‘…the appalling beauty of the vast milky mass…’

 (Quotations: Herman Melville’s Moby Dick)

 Steph Goodger 2007

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