Imaginary Worlds

From miniature environments to large-scale installations, this section showcases a diverse range of imaginary worlds. New commissions made especially for The First Cut by James Aldridge, Andrea Mastrovito, Mia Pearlman and Andrew Singleton respond to the architecture of the gallery space. Other artists have engaged with time, motion, engineering, consumerism, environmentalism, nature and artifice. Many artists draw with a knife to create powerful silhouettes, poetic and spiritual scenes, as well as nightmarish or dark fairytale worlds. Manabu Hangai has constructed a dramatic and enchanted walk through forest within the gallery. These fantasy worlds transport us on our own journeys of the imagination.

Off the Page

Books are a source of inspiration for artists who cut, deform, carve and shred publications. The source material ranges from discarded books, encyclopaedias, pulp fiction, classic literature, artist’s monographs, iconic books and pornographic magazines. Scenes which we imagine when reading fiction are given three dimensional form in sculpture and animation. In a new work made especially for The First Cut, Nicola Dale has created a tree of knowledge for our digital age. The publications are both destroyed by artists’ interventions and given new life.

Mapping New Territories

Artists that re-use maps, atlases and currency are the focus here. Maps are evocative of journeys, to real locations, to times gone by and to imagined places. They also chart how landscapes and political boundaries change over time. Mapping and currency have a strong relationship with power, global politics, dominant ideologies and control. Using vintage and Ordnance Survey maps, atlases, bank notes and graphic representations of the natural and built environment, artists are engaging with cartography to create new landscapes of the imagination.