Sky Works is run by Asphyxia, a Deaf acrobat/street performer who specialises in clowning, trapeze, hula hoops and adagio.

Throughout her childhood, Asphyxia was passionately committed to ballet. In her late teens, when her deafness precluded her from pursuing ballet as a career professionally, she turned to circus. Immediately she was hooked, and enjoyed applying the grace and physical discipline she had learnt with ballet to her circus routines. Initially, in 1995, she learnt to tumble at Circus Oz, then in 1996 joined the Women's Circus where she took up trapeze.

In 1998, as well as attending numerous circus festivals and training projects, Asphyxia commenced private lessons in swinging and flying trapeze from the reknowned Rita Van Opzeeland, and began performing professionally with Ross Mathers in their double-balance show, Angelfish. In 1999 Asphyxia began sharing her circus skills with the wider community, becoming a teacher in the Flying High Circus targeted at young people who have been identified as "at risk". She also took on a position as trainer with the Litte Big Tops Children's Circus, where she went on, the following year, to direct their end of year show, involving over seventy young children. West Ad, a programme for women detoxing from drug and alcohol dependencies, employed Asphyxia to teach circus skills aimed at increasing confidence, team-sharing and fitness for their clients. Asphyxia's teaching experience also includes Rocket's Circus Extreme, a circus programme for adults with mental health issues, and numerous freelance workshops for the Deaf community and wider community at festivals, events and school camps.

Asphyxia was spotted performing her new trapeze act, The Caged Girl, at Albury Circus Festival in 1999 by the people who were setting up NICA's National Training Project. She was invited to attend, and after a rigourous selection process secured her place in their five-month full time training project. This lead to many opportunities for her as she further developed her trapeze act and took up hula-hooping. The following year, in 2000, Melbourne Fringe Festival commissioned the development of Dr Decibel, her solo hula-hooping clown character. Dr Decibel has since been performed at over 50 different community festivals and events and has become Asphyxia's main source of income.

In 2001 Asphyxia received funding from Next Wave Festival's Kickstart Programme to further develop Blood Makes Noise, a love story told with circus and sign language, which she had devised with Amanda Owen in 1996. The project had started as a barter arrangement with Amanda, then Head Trainer for the Women's Circus. Amanda taught Asphyxia acrobatics and Asphyxia taught Amanda sign language. It was during this exchange that they devised Blood Makes Noise, a physical theatre show, which got as far as a work-in-progress showing before Amanda became involved in other commitments. With the assistance of Next Wave Festival, Asphyxia resurrected the project with a new team of artists, and at the end of the development period the show was performed at the Black Box in the Victorian Arts Centre. Blood Makes Noise has recently returned from a sell-out international tour in 2002 which included a season in Sydney and a season at Deaf Way II in Washington D.C., an international deaf arts festival held at Gallaudet, the world's only deaf university. The home season in Melbourne resulted in much acclaim for Asphyxia from both the deaf and hearing communities.

Not limited to the performing arts, Asphyxia graduated top of her year from her Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Science at RMIT and has since built her own mudbrick solar powered cottage where she now lives. Asphyxia enjoys tending her almost self-suffficient garden and eating its produce.