The Surreal House

This week I went to London to visit ContainerPlus (post to come on illustration blog) while I was in London with my mum we decided to visit the Surreal House exhibition at the Barbican. I've never been to the Barbican before and I was quite surprised by the area and the building itself as they were all pretty ugly, very 1970s, tall blocks of flats. However the inside of the Barbican was lovely and there was a giant courtyard with fountains/lots of water and giant reeds and plants which would be a great thing to look out onto!

The exhibition itself was fantastic, there were so many pieces by artists that I've been looking at or influenced by during my final year so it was quite a thrill to see the pieces up close, in particular the boxes by Joseph Cornell and a small sample of his collection of photographs and images etc which made up his extensive studio. I managed to watch the whole of Jan Swankmajer's 'The Jabberwocky' which was fascinating, I had only seen a fraction of it when I'd researched him in the past and the full film is amazing, there is so much detail, I was in awe of it all. I also watched a film by Maya Deren called 'Meshes of the Afternoon' which was really unusual but very enjoyable following a sort of surrealist dream of a woman repeating the same action of entering her home after chasing a mirror-faced figure, each time she looked around her home objects had moved or were changing in front of her eyes. Some of my favourite pieces were ceramic sculptures by Rachel Kneebone which were a mass of objects and figures all merged into 1 glossy white web, they were so detailed and beautiful I would have liked longer to have studied them properly as there was so much to see.

Rachel Kneebone sculpture 'In the midst of quietness, branched thoughts murmur' image from theindenpendent.co.uk



Jan Swankmajer 'The Jabberwocky' from youtube