Dominic Harris: Imagine


Magical exhibition at the Halycon Gallery of video presentations by Dominic Harris.

It’s hard to find an overarching label to describe this show. It was digital works presented like paintings or nature studies. The commentary called them a “surreal and whimsical take on reality set in the context of art history”. 

Flowers, birds and butterflies looked still but as you walked past them they moved in interaction with you. With the sunflower shown here its petals moved gently in a breeze and in a representation of butterflies mounted in a case, one by one they flapped their wings. My favourite were four pictures referencing Dutch flower pictures which gradually got more modern and minimal until the last was just falling petals. The gallery assistant showed me how, if you moved your hand across them, you could move the flowers or they retreated into buds if you touched them. I could have played with it for hours!

I wasn’t so taken with the Disney works. Harris is one of the few artists to be granted the right to use Disney images but I found them a bit twee and more like a theme park attraction that an independent art work however that didn’t stop me smiling at the seven dwarfs moving as I walked past them.

Closed 16 February 2020

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