A VISIT TO THE ORACLE
by Alice Instone
A new immersive installation by award winning artist Alice Instone. Inspired by the idea of A Visit to The Oracle and our need for magic, mystery and catharsis in modern life. This interactive exhibition was designed for participants to leave renewed, uplifted and joyful.
Open Dates ++++ 3 WEEKS ONLY+++
1-17 December 2023,
Thursday - Saturday 12-7,
Sundays 12 – 6
Free Entry
Unit 210, Brough Yards, Dirty Lane, London Bridge, SE1 9AD
Visitors were invited to go on an enchanted journey to the Oracle with award winning artist Alice Instone. A Visit to The Oracle, expresses a belief in art’s power to console and regenerate. The interactive artworks celebrated our desire for hands-on, tactile, real experiences and fed our appetite for illusion, ritual, mystery, magic and connection. The works transported you to a place to feel secure, offering the comfort and reassurance our forebears sought through art and stories when the future seemed alarming.
A Visit to The Oracle invited us to literally voyage into the dark forest, past magical beasts and spells, where you could: sit in a monstrous cat’s jaws and reflect, leave your troubles in a giant bird-woman’s mouth and explore your shadow side with the Book of Self Loathing, visit the mysterious Motherhouse before encountering the beauty and regeneration of the Grandmother’s Garden and connecting with your ancestors. Go on a journey with the moon with Alice’s short film Oracle which won Best Fantasy Film at the Cannes Short Film Festival. Visit the spellbinding golden cobweb room and light a candle. Read from The Spell, one of Alice’s trademark ‘list’ artworks which meditates on the passage of time. Finish by exploring your shared unconscious heritage and looking into your past and future by playing a game with Alice’s new Grandmother’s Oracle Cards, and then writing in The Book of Grandmothers.
Alice also created a number of items for the Oracle Bazaar, from the beautiful ‘Totems’ which sit in the palm of your hand and sooth, to ‘Snake Oil’ - a cure for ‘all ailments’, alongside her brand new set of exquisite Grandmother’s Oracle cards which follow on from her highly collectible and sold out Grandmother’s Tarot.
Alice believes using our imaginations makes us all feel better. Her central message incites us to be understanding to ourselves and each other, because what we have in common is far greater than what divides us. Much of Alice’s work uses shared behaviours, associations and memories to reveal the similarities that bind us together, but also the infinite variety of human truth. She has used our to-do lists, our shoes, memories about our grandmothers, giant communal washing lines and playing cards to reveal our commonalities. This sense of interrelatedness is key to her work, and thousands of visitors contributed to-do lists to her Pram In The Hall installation, and the magic caravan she created for the United Nations in 2018 (which will also visit the new exhibition) was seen by many hundreds of thousands of Londoners when it visited Tate Modern Bankside, Carnaby Street and Canary Wharf. Her film ‘Oracle’ encourages us to experience hope and renewal and beauty. This is the artist who wants us all to feel better.
“I was thinking about pilgrimages and how fun it would be to visit an Oracle. I made the first Oracle for people to write down the worst voices in their heads and feed them to her - when I wrote down my own (which say things I wouldn’t say to my worst enemy) they seemed quite funny and lost their power. Once the Oracle was sitting in the studio, I began to want to bring her to life, which is how the show began.”
