There Are Other Worlds

(They Have Not Told You Of)

Artist Statement
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In my work I want to explore the journeys that our dream states take us and the subconsciousness that melts the imaged and the familiar. The tension of belief and disbelief. The morphing of the real and unreal. Glimpsing the known within the great unknown. The effects of our waking lives, perpetual dreams, false awakenings and déjà vu episodes. Reintroducing our childhood wonder and awe back into our adult lives.

These moments or scenarios can feel like a medication for the mundane, inducing an escape chute into a psychedelic wonderland. Another world, constructed through imagination and repetition.

Taking inspiration from Luigi Seafini’s “Codex Seraphinianus”, and philosopher Ernst Haeckel's “Kunstformen der Natur”; publications which both feature illustrations of the bizarre and fantastical. Although one being pure surrealist fantasy, and the other focused on the fantastical within the natural world; when mixed together, it might be hard to distinguish between which is real and which is not.

Picasso said that 'Everything you can imagine is real.'

While our imagination is vast, it is (according to certain schools of thought) seemingly limited to our experiences. We can only imagine something that we have experienced through our senses. We use these observations as reference and augment them in our minds. Ie. most of the aliens and characters that are imagined in Sci-Fi and cartoon movies, no matter how ridiculous or outrageous, are reflections on natural life forms.

With all this in mind, this ongoing project seeks to explore the creation of the unfamiliar from the familiar, to make new worlds from the wonders of our own.

The title ‘There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of)’ comes from a Sun Ra song from the 1978 album, Lanquidity, itself an extraordinary venture into uncharted musical terrain.

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Soundtrack ft. elements of Sun Ra / Oake / Broadcast

http://there-are-other-worlds.com/