'Aria', 2013

Aria is a site-specific audio-visual piece featuring a freediver and a female soprano projected inside a shipping container on Brighton’s seafront. Immersed in the soundscape of an a capella voice, the viewer experiences a figure moving within the depths of the underwater landscape, pulsing with the lyrical rhythm of the singer’s breath. In this space the boundaries of interior and exterior become blurred and perceptions become distorted. Critchley who often works with video and photography in the underwater environment, is interested in the shift when the body becomes immersed underwater, a space that is detached from the everyday, which necessitates both a physical and mental realignment.