Extending the Friendly Skies is a multi-media installation that utilizes the vocabulary of aeronautical safety to make subtle comments on gender, security and globalization. For this piece, Mellor documented a series of actions through photographs and video where she dressed in a 1960’s style stewardess uniform.  These performances use familiar safety routines presented in new, unexpected contexts.  Grouping photographs of the performances, Mellor asks the viewer to question how the repetition of these nonsensical gestures points at certain conventions on security, danger and institutionalized codes of conduct. Mellor frames these actions with absurdity leaving the audience with the uncomfortable sense of a joke that is not fully understood.  The structure of life vests greets the viewer with a sense of uncertainty and the feeling of entering into an unknown state of emergency.

Extending the Friendly Skies (Instructions at Sea) from Alexia Mellor on Vimeo.