Sleepy Heads

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

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

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.