This exhibition of paintings by Alison Hand, brings together her artworks which explore time, illusion, hallucination, beliefs, and historical and imaginary landscapes. Some of the works allude to how time is experienced in dreams, layering recurring images, multiple moons and reflections, strange characters, and the historical and contemporary, to create impossible and surreal landscapes. Darkness becomes a veil through which things are hidden and revealed.
Other paintings in the exhibition, use the séance as a metaphor for belief systems, and themes of illusion, fakery, credulity, and the other-worldly power of the woman-medium. Hand overlays red and blue to create an optical disturbance, with pattern becoming hyperactive and suggesting hallucination. Alongside these, the mirror paintings depict mirrors that don’t reflect you, or when tilted reflect a 17th century night sky, moving backwards through time. The mirror is a strange object which is both real and unreal, and relates to the illusion of painting itself.
