Theatres of Thought

We went to the late night opening at The Minories Art Gallery in Colchester on Friday where I spotted an exhibition I had not seen yet- Alison Stockmarr's Theatres of Thought.  It is a combination of upcycling, vintage and books- so obviously it is right up Lesley's Girls street!

One of the huge appeals of Alison's work is that it 'has an ethos of recycling and reusing at its heart' (ref: exhibition information sheet) and she sees the a different way of bringing life in a very artistic and appealing manner.  Essentially this exhibition is a selection of vintage discarded books which have had a window cut into them within which she creates a scene using an almost Victorian decoupage style.  The detail on some of the pieces is immense (they even provide magnifying glasses for your convenience) and it certainly echoes the theme of "a picture being able to tell a thousand words".

Some of the 'Face Books' - a collection of books presenting a scene that 'refines the story to an image or a snapshot of the story's entirety'  - are so familiar stories to me that it was lovely and gently amusing to them distilled like this.  It's not just the books I love but the discarded images that have been used to create the decoupage style interior.

The story the 'Magic Suitcase of MakedoandMend' is a series of books which rather than using a single book and creating a single scene, it has a series of 18 books each with a scene within a story that Alison has created- fittingly this gentle morality tale is about recycling, and of all the pieces in the exhibition these are the most intricate.

Alison Stockmarr's Theatres of Thought runs from Saturday 27th October to Friday 21st December 2012 at The Minories Art Gallery, 74 High Street, Colchester, CO1 1UE. So with Sonya Todd's exhibition still running at the moment what better reason could you have for making the trip?

Images courtesy of SJR Photography.

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