Jo Lloyd
Death Role
‘I am the shape you made me. Filth teaches filth.’

Elektra in Sophokles, Elektra, in An Oresteia, trans. Anne Carson (New York: Faber and Faber, 2009), 78.


Death role
comprises a large video projection set before a seven-metre-high reproduction of Arthur Boyd’s central backdrop for Robert Helpmann’s Elektra ballet, Double figure with shark head and horns (1962–1963). The video captures an unrecognisable Lloyd with her face obscured, wearing a costume fringed with hair and grappling with the backdrop. Her body is dwarfed by the scale of the drawing, but she remains persistent. In this distorted, effortful dance Lloyd continues on, after Elektra—a lone, extreme figure seeking resolution after tragedy.

29 January – 12 June 2022
From impulse to action
Bundanon Art Museum

Single-channel video with stereo sound, costume, reproduction of Elektra backdrop.

Camera: James Wright
Composer: Duane Morrison
Costume designer: Andrew Treloar
Costume construction: Hailey Scott
Producer: Michaela Coventry
Backdrop reproduction: Michael Betts

Installation photography: Zan Wimberley