SHEZAD DAWOOD LAUNCHES HMS: ALICE LIDDELL
Just launched! Following on from earlier announcements, we’re delighted to reveal the fantastical HMS Alice Liddell, our major new site-responsive art installation by Shezad Dawood, suspended mid-air in The Circle area of the station.
ABOUT HMS ALICE LIDDELL
The artwork reflects elements of William Henry Barlow’s innovative and radical engineering of the station itself, as well as Sir George Gilbert Scott’s gothic spires of the now St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel. This iconic architecture was formative to Dawood, who grew up locally and has a longstanding relationship with the area. Its aesthetic and cultural heritage is profoundly embedded in the work: the sculpture’s namesake is the real inspiration behind Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Carroll’s original manuscript is archived in the neighbouring British Library. Dawood’s work reclaims Alice as a traveller for our times: a proto-science fiction heroine who explored the quantum possibilities of multiple but connected realities and universes.
Suspended in space, and able to be enjoyed from multiple vantage points, HMS Alice Liddell is painted with a polychromatic finish, in a nod to the psychedelic colourways of imagined wonderlands and voyages to outer space, while also paying homage to the diversity of London’s communities. The work embodies a fantastical vision, where the past meets the future of travel, technology and collective experience, via the space of the imagination.
EMBARK ON A LITERAL AND METAPHORICAL JOURNEY LIKE ALICE…
Move through the past to a kaleidoscopic future by experiencing the new Augmented Reality filter, listening to newly commissioned music and fresh podcasts to bring the artwork to life!
When visiting the station, use your phone to unlock a brand-new Augmented Reality filter by scanning the QR code on display in the station to expand the experience of Dawood’s work.
The AR also features a newly commissioned song by JayaHadADream, a member of the Nottingham-based, all-female music collective WondHERland established in partnership with New Art Exchange who are supporters of Dawood. This collaboration connects the commission in London with the vibrant art scene of Nottingham, a key stop from St. Pancras!
You can also tune into a series of podcasts produced by WondHERland in dialogue with the themes in Dawood’s work and listen to more songs written by the musicians on our well-loved jukebox, situated close to the artwork. This collaboration also involved visual artist Honey Williams, and sound artist Tom Harris, both of whom are also Nottingham based creatives.
