dreamers awake - white cube, bermondsey
- Curated by Susanna Greeves
- Aug 28, 2017
- 3 min read
"Dreamers awake" is an exhibition currently taking place at the White Cube in Bermondsey. It explores the influence of Surrealism throughout the work of more than 50 women artists. This exhibition shows sculptures, paintings, collages, photography and drawings by these women from the 1930s to the present day. This collection includes art by well known surrealist artists through to emerging artists - this gave me a chance to look at some of the artists I don't know and research further into their work. For a lot of women surrealism is a gaining of self-awareness, exploring their inner thoughts and feelings, dealing with their experiences, and locating or constructing their true identities. For this reason I really enjoyed this exhibition - I enjoyed trying to figure a potential meaning behind each piece of art.
This sculpture to the right was created by an artist called Kelly Akashi, it's called: Well(-)hung. It mainly stood out to me because of Akashi's use of space. I absolutely love how she hung her sculpture from the celling and it draped down to the floor. Some of the hands in her piece are clutching objects - I wasn't too sure on the meaning behind all of this, but I liked coming up with potential meanings in my head. For example: Are the hands ascending, descending or potentially trapped?
Another artist I discovered in this exhibition is Caitlin Keogh - (paintings below)
I really like the reoccurring mannequin-like female bodies in her work. I find it interesting how she them surrounds these mannequins with objects, symbols and patterns. The pastel colours she uses allows Caitlin to include more sinister subjects into her paintings. The contrast between bloody knives, hole punched body parts and scissors cutting through hands with clusters of flowers is unsettling but oddly beautiful. After seeing Keogh's work I have researched her and i really like her pieces of art. Here a few more pieces of her work which were not in the "dreamers awake" exhibition:
The final artist who I really liked the look of in this Surrealist exhibition is called Laurie Simmons. She is an American artist, photographer and filmmaker - in this exhibition is was mainly focused on her photography piece called: Magnum Opus II (the Bye-Bye) - seen below. Simmons stages scenes for her camera with dolls, ventriloquist dummies, objects on legs, and people, to create photographs that reference domestic scenes. This piece of art is part of her walking and lying objects series she started in the 1980's and continued to 1991 (which was when this specific piece was created) Most of the photographs in this series use miniature dolls legs. I feel as if this photograph is a catwalk showing off different objects as clothes.
Whilst researching Laurie Simmons I came across some of her other pieces of work - I find them all quite creepy. She seems to have an obsession with using dolls throughout her work. Weird as it is I find it oddly interesting about her work. There must be a reason why she is so obsessed with dolls...
Another reason I was intrigued about Simmons's photograph to the right hand side is because the developm-ent process from film to photo. It is called the gelatin silver process - Gelatin silver prints are a general term describing the most common process for making black and white photographs since the 1890s. To use this method you had to coat some paper with a layer of egg white and salt to create a smooth surface. The paper was then coated with a layer of silver nitrate. The salt and silver nitrate combined to form light sensitive silver salts. This double coated paper could then be placed in contact with a negative and exposed to the sun to produce a print. - At the moment I have been very much into film photography. It's interesting finding out multiple different ways to develop film!
I would really recommend going to see this surrealist exhibition filled with various women artists work!! Personally I quite like Surrealism, therefore I did really enjoy this exhibition!! Also if you are a big believer in feminism (as I am) I would really push you to go a visit this exhibition!! It ends on the 17th of September!!!
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