Monday 10 June 2019

Sleepy Heads

Sleepy Heads - Blyth Gallery, Level 5 Sherfield Building, Imperial College, Off Exhibition Road, London, SW7 2AZ
Opening Night 11 June 6.30 - 8.30, exhibition continues daily from 9am - 9pm until 11 July.

https://www.artrabbit.com/events/sleepy-heads

Sleepy Heads flyer image by Cathy Lomax.

Two of my works, join the other sleepers to add to the uneasy slumber.
The Way Home, is one of a series of paintings of the same name and is on loan of the collection of Robert Whytehead. The Electric Girls is a reconfiguration of a commission for Senate House Library made in response to research residency centred around the Harry Price Library of Magical Literature.

Artists: Rebecca Fortnum, Jane Hayes Greenwood, Aly Helyer,
Mindy Lee, Cathy Lomax, Alicia Reyes McNamara, Hannah Murgatroyd, Victoria Rance, Freddie Robins, Gabriela Schutz, Sarah Sparkes and Debra Swann
Curated by Mindy Lee with an introductory text by Alexandra Kokoli

Sleepy Heads explores the figure in relation to the unconscious, fantasies, masks, memories, dreams, autobiography, sleeping, sleepers, and death. This exhibition creates an intimate and unnerving dormitory of artworks.

Above the closed and fringéd lid
’Neath which thy slumb’ring soul lies hid,
That, o’er the floor and down the wall,
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Excerpt from The Sleeper by Edger Allen Poe

The Electric Girl - Trance Mediums, (detail) Sarah Sparkes, 2014 - 2019
 Bodies and reality are left behind, suspended as we journey inside our heads. Sleeping is a place for dreaming, a place to reinvent our experiences, where fantasies and nightmares roam free. The body’s unconscious vessel inhabits a space between the living and the dead. The head is a recognisable mask adrift from its personality. Those awake, await consciousness to return, to reanimate the gaze and connect.
Sleepy Heads explores the figure in relation to the unconscious, fantasies, masks, memories, dreams, autobiography, sleeping, sleepers, and death. This exhibition creates an intimate and unnerving dormitory of artworks.