Curiouser and Curiouser - Alice in the Wonderland

Date of the visit: 12th.November.2011 at 19:30.
Date of the journal written: 14th.November.2011
Time: 00:00am. 

Having assumed that I missed Alice in the Wonderland exhibition last week had brought me back to life again after looking at the leaflets in FACT Cinema stating that it’s still on-going for another month! Life is surely full of surprises! Hence i went to the one-night immersive theatre event called Curiouser and Curiouser featuring Alice in the Wonderland. 

”A darkly playful and absurd experience awaits visitors, inviting you to journey beyond the exhibition and ‘through the glasses.”  written on the back of the map (picture below).

I didn’t expect the exhibition to be so immerse as it started from the ground floor of TATE gallery and the whole 4th floor. 1 hour and a half wasn’ even enough to finish looking up at art pieces, hence my friend and me were running around a lot to get a glance at every small bit of the exhibition and making notes of the ones we are interested in. Unfortunately, I am not going to describe how my journey went because I have got not pictures to showcase as i forgot to bring my camera with me (shameful of me…) but rather I will make a list of some pieces of artworks that caught my attention.

1. Annelies Štrba, Nyima 438, 2009 © Courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London:

Exploring ideas such as the journey from childhood to adulthood; language, meaning and nonsense; scale and perspective; and perception and reality.

2. Luc Tuymans:
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=2612&page=1&sole=y&collab=y&attr=y&sort=default&tabview=bio 

3. Harry Furniss (1854 - 1925): 

4. Charles Dodgson ( better known as Lewis Carroll, 1832 -1898):

This is the first time that I know he is the creator of Alice in the Wonderland  and Through the looking glass. 

 (His portrait)

He is a famous photographer and usually he took picture of children and family. 

5. George Dunlop Leslie (1835 - 1921):
I was mostly impressed by this realistic painting of George, had a while staring at its intricate details and the feeling it gave to me. The girl in the picture seems like Alice, and for some reasons, I felt like she was real or was trying to tell me something. Quite creepy though.  

6. William Halman Hunt (1827 - 1910):

The Triumph of the Innocents.
It looks small in the internet but in real life, is ten times bigger than me vertically. 

7. Sir John Everett Millais (1829 - 1896):

Waking (1865).
”Millais posed his second daughter Mary for this image of a young girl sitting bolt upright, stirred by birdsong. It represents a blended stylistic approach: the heavy knitted blanket and its tasselled edge bunched around the bed frame rendered with Pre-Raphaelite precision, the decorative bands of colour and abrupt cropping more indicative of Aestheticism.”

8. Arthur Hughes ( 1832 - 1915 )

9. André Breton (1896 - 1966) - Founder of Surrealism

Definition of Surrealism by André  Breton (taken from his book):

”Surrealism rests in the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of association neglected heretofore; in the omnipotence of the dream and in the disinterested play of thought. It tends definitely to do away with all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in the solution of the principle problems of life.”

10. Dorothea Tanning 

I made a note of her quote from a book that I really liked, it says:
”To make a trap with no exit at all either for you or me.” 

Pincushion to Serve as Fetish  (1965) 

11. Percy Stow (1876 - 1919):

He made an adaptation of Alice in the Wonderland.

Alice in Wonderland - Percy Stow & Cecil M.Hepworth

12. The Wonderland Postage Stampcase by Lewis Carroll:

13. Here is a lists of illustrators that has done illustrations for the Alice in the Wonderland books:

- Thomas Robinson:

- Harry Rountree:

Dagmar Berková:

- Adrienne Segur:

- Nicole Claveloux:

- Dusan Kallay:

- Charles Folkard:

- Mervyn Peake:

- Blanche Mcmanus:

- Franklin Hughes:

- Alice B.Woodward Bell:

- Arthur Rackham:

- John Tenniel: 

Books:

- Alice in Wonderland through the visual arts. 

Photography:

- Anna Gaskell:

- Liliana Porter:

14. Adrian Piper ( I don’t remember who he is…this name was written down in rush)

15. Torsten Laushmann

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There were way more exhibits in the Tate but I can’t find the right pictures to put it in my blog which I am really sad about, yet i will wait for a week till people who have actually taken picture of the exhibition to upload the pictures online and hopefully take them for collection

The exhibition wasn’t just a display but you also get the chance to meet the characters from Alice in Wonderland in person. They were all creepy characters… The cat really like shouting at people loudly giving random presents, I got this little card by the cat (picture below). ”A knot” I wonder if it has any connection to my life? I believe everything i receive means something and i am gonna find out! On the back of the paper says ”By order of the Queen” I guess the Queen of hearts wants me to make a knot?

Also, there were two Alices walking around! One was named as the waking Alice and the other as the sleeping Alice. One of my favourite character is the white rabbit, he just keep running around looking at its clock and looking confused all the time. Sometimes, all the characters would gathered together to have a tea party. That was seriously fun!