ALICE
THE ALICE STAIRCASE, a bespoke commissioned project, comprising of an 8 interlinking canvas interpretation of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures In Wonderland & Through The Looking Glass.
Collection of Kelly-Anne Lyons
In interpretating Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures In Wonderland & Through The Looking Glass I conceived of a composition which would connect both books as one continuous yet appropriately topsy-turvy narrative. THE ALICE STAIRCASE comprises of 8 interlinking, downward stepping canvases which tell both stories in opposite directions – Alice in Wonderland as you walk down and Through the Looking Glass as you walk up, the culminating passages of each tale meeting at the centre.
As with much of my practice, I essentially enacted Wonderland in my studio, making many of the costumes, masks and props and asking friends to 'perform' the characters: my wife, naturally, was cast as the Queen of Hearts and she can be seen commanding me, as one of the playing cards, to paint her white roses red.
When I paint images of women laughing, eating or interacting I am investigating the ways in which the most seemingly innocuous actions can be subversive, just as acts of transgression may be foregrounded by the prosaic. Alice chimes closely with these catastrophic laughing heroines of mine. Like them she is often inappropriate and immune to self-censure, she has been described as an impertinent interlocutor: having no fear of authority she instead asks every question which occurs to her regardless of propriety, frequently scorning the preposterous answers she receives in return.
Alice is smart and she is boundlessly curious, she prises open every door which might not wish to permit her and ventures into territories which would rather not admit her. As would any true adventurer, when presented with a cake which says Eat Me and a bottle which says Drink Me, after a brief concern for what may be the consequences, she is far too willfuly inquisitive not to taste them.