It is hard to tell what the fish make of Mikel Murfi’s intrusion into their deep tank at the Salthill aquarium. Surrounded by rocks, he arranges himself in a sun chair on a small, raft-like deck. Breathing through a long curved tube, an oxygen tank tucked beneath his white shirt, he seems utterly self-sufficient, like a shipwreck survivor, lost in his thoughts.
It is a startling opening to a 45-minute piece that would be called performance art in a gallery. On a bank of seats facing the three-metre-high glass tank, the small audience surveys the specimen in front of them. A dizzyingly inventive physical performer and director, Murfi often collaborates with other theatre, dance and opera artists. Here his director is Kellie Hughes, with designers Sabine Dargent (set) and Sinéad Wallace (lighting). While it seems to flow dreamily, this arresting new work they have created with Loco & Reckless Productions and Galway international arts festival relies on pinpoint precision and skill.
It is only when Murfi’s Robinson Crusoe-like character completes his fastidious weightlifting routine that he pays attention to the teeming life around him, as swarms of fish approach him – bream, wreckfish and starry smooth-hound sharks, according to the programme. To a soundtrack of honking traffic, he playfully conducts the fishes’ darting movement. Later he plays piano in the water, the accompanying music evoking memories that seem linked to a past loss. Face down, rolling and gliding like an astronaut, he is riding waves of grief.
Declan Gibbon’s string and percussion score surges, as an agitated Murfi shines a torch through the glass at us, searchingly. As the tempest subsides, he undulates and floats, now with an affecting sense of surrender or acceptance. With the fish encircling him as he swims, he has undergone “a sea change, into something rich and strange”.
At Galway international arts festival until 26 July