Gasping Goldie is a solo performance devised in response to a childhood memory of the artists pet goldfish.
It is an intense 15 minute piece with voice overs representing a goldfish’s last gasps, and a child, in dialogue with one another.
It has been performed at Open University, ArtWash in Oxford, Meanwhile Space in Cheltenham and at many private events and gallery openings.
The memory was of taking a gold fish out of a tank of water when I was a very young child. I gave it an extensive guided tour of my family home, believing that I was benefitting the thing by ‘broadening it’s horizon.’ The moment when my mother found me standing in the middle of the lawn talking to a dead gold fish on a saucer was a moment of revelation for a four year old -that not all creatures felt like me!
Jessica Rost
We are all drowning all the time…in life. One person’s comfort zone is another’s anxiety. We may be innocent in purpose but how often do we really understand one another?
Gasping Goldie is, on one level, about human ignorance, our inability to understand truly a situation before we react. But on another level it is the story of a creative struggle, a soul gasping to survive. There is more than one way to drown.
It began as a cathartic poem, as much of Jessica’s performance work does, surfacing as a feeling that needed some real form, and, out of an archive of daily experiences past and present became the alarming and yet humorous piece that it is!
The performance is available for bookings.