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John Walter, Alien Sex Club

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Os Gemeos

Oscar Wilde Temple

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Immersive worlds

I prize going to a gallery, being immersed in a world and coming out knowing important and significant information. Immersive worlds offer the opportunity to truly escape, forget yourself.  Objects or cultural signifiers can either jump right at you or completely slip you by. Both grab your attention and they can completely slide by. The work animates with audience engagement, it becomes more than itself.

as well as being immersed in fiction, you absorb facts, they transfer through the skin, physically through touch, smell, feel, experience and play. Through a interrelated process the work does not stand alone- the artist works with the audience, considering their experience. The work is made with a viewer in mind.

I saw John Walter's Alien Sex Club at the Welcome trust in 2018. You enter the sex club, a sauna, bath and you enter someone else's world. Environments not seen before you gain insight and perspective. You see inside another's mind. I was struck between large iconic works and the small details of the wallpaper, oscillating between the two and realising they make a whole. Whilst making multi-media experiences Walter has a dedication to painting and visual medium as we live in a visual world. He worlds provide areas of play, learning and engagement. Walking into the grubby toilets and hearing audio's of people and their experience really provides an idenity and humananises the audios' he presented.

Os Gemeos bright and colourful installations speak of the everyday their large scale murals allow them to be for everyone. The everyone is represented in the work as swarms of people hold up their arms, the worker that has migrated into the city. The Tight-Rope Walker, a man in a suit. Their work uses symbols to move from the individual to the crowd to the individual within a crowd playing with themes of the everyday shared experience. using masks, costume, blank cartoon faces to represent every man and his unique identity.

McDermott & McGough's The Oscar Wild Temple could be mistaken for an actual church as the interior wad inally decorated with beautifully hung paintings, however, the careful attention to detail that supported transformed the building with paintings into one cohesive art made up of tiny parts.

Raised, brown parcque flooring, 18th c wallpaper, and contemporary paintings. Immersive environment gave space for work referencing a range of centuries a place to sit. pulling together times gone and the now. A massive draw of the Oscar Wild temple being mistaken for a church is that it actually provides a safe space, a social and political landscape for communities to come together

I wanted to create an immersive piece. A world. A Peice of work that becomes just a visual indicator to a world much bigger than itself. A body of work that grows and develops with each item added.

The Renodnol, The Londoner. Who are these people, what do they do, why do they do it. As you start to ask questions your world grows. Detail starts to fit into place as you start to investigate your fiction.

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