Did anyone catch the latest episode of Imagine on Tuesday night on BBC One? It was brilliant. Entitled ‘Art is Child’s Play’ it delved into childhood experience of play and tried to make a connection between early creativity to artistic endeavours later on in life. Lots of Britain’s leading artists were interviewed about their practice by the lovely Alan Yentob and offered fascinating insights into the transformative power of their early creative experiences.
You can catch it on the BBC iPlayer until the 13th July. Click on the image below to go straight to the programme.
A few of the artists featured were people I’d not heard of and who’s work i was unaware of. I loved on of the pieces shown by Mat Collishaw. It’s a modern take on a Victorian zoetrope but instead of using flat images within a sphere, Mat re-created the scene in three dimensions using small models taken from fairytale books. The scene looks pretty innocent when static, but once set in motion under stroboscopic light, it takes on a more sinister feel. You can see an example of one of these on his website. It’s called the ‘Garden of Un-Earthly Delights’ and you’ll find it within the ‘Archive’ – I can’t give a direct link as his site is built using Adobe Flash.
I was also fascinated by the work of Polly Morgan who incorporates taxidermy into her work and has a freezer full of road kill and dead animals. I love her work, it has such a calmness about it.
