The next exciting project while we were staying in Cheltenham was a mixed exhibition curated by yours truly at the Art Couture Gallery in Painswick. The idea stemmed from an amazing photo shoot I’d done with the photographer Danniella Jaine for her final degree project. Her idea was to take each character from Alice in Wonderland to represent one of the 7 deadly sins. The shoot took us three days with 7 models but we didn’t manage to get them published so I decided it would make a good foundation for an Alice inspired exhibition with the images on the walls and each of the outfits displayed on mannequins in the gallery. I had met the ceramic artist Claire Baker whist doing my MA at Bath Spa and knew that her ceramics would be perfect to set the scene for a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. I also asked the milliner Lisa Jayne to provide crowns and hats that we’d used in the shoot. Whilst I was planning this extravaganza I came across Anthony Lewis Churchill who amongst other things has set up a children’s charity and makes incredible children’s clothes also inspired by Alice in Wonderland. Another textile artist I’d met at Bath Spa, Susan Sutton, also provided some lovely whimsical creatures which added a further edge of fantasy. The exhibition looked amazing but as Painswick is a bit off the beaten track, the number of visitors and buyers was a bit disappointing. The whole experience was lovely though and I proved to myself that I could curate an interesting exhibition.
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