Carolyn Lefley

CAROLYN LEFLEY
Fictional Space











20th November - 15th December 2009


This show is in association with Photomonth 2009, the annual east London photography festival, and Troika Editions.

Shed-and-a-Half Gallery presents a solo show of new work by Carolyn Lefley, Fictional Space; an exhibition of photographs that depict a world that floats between reality and fantasy, between believable spaces and sites of make-believe. In Lefley’s photographs the interior space of the home is imbued with the otherworldly realms of childhood stories: Narnia, the Wild Wood, Wonderland and Lilliput.

In the larger shed, photographs from the series, Within, set within the make-believe world of the doll’s house, in which spaces can be permeated with both playfulness and melancholy. The doll’s house has captured Lefley’s imagination from an early age since watching the film The Incredible Shrinking Man as a child, where the film’s diminutive hero is relegated to the doll’s house only to be attacked by a ferocious pet cat. A doll’s house is a dream home in miniature, a place for childhood imaginings and adult escapism. Within explores the tension between fantasy (the miniature) and reality (the gigantic). From within each room, through the recurring windows, we gaze out to the larger reality of Lefley’s own home. The commonplace domestic details are transformed into strange and uncanny vistas. In the half-light within, forgotten toys and Narnian furniture lay abandoned, waiting to be played with once more, igniting the spark of a forgotten longing.

In the small shed Lefley reveals her new work in progress, Realm. Could a fairy or supernatural realm run parallel to reality? Authors such as C S Lewis and George MacDonald were fascinated by this and used the home as a portal into a mythical realm. The realm of Narnia is entered through a wardrobe and the layers of fur coats inside which become trees.

'The next moment she found that what was rubbing against her face and hands was no longer soft fur but something hard and rough and even prickly. "Why, it is just like branches of trees!" exclaimed Lucy. And then she saw that there was a light ahead of her; not a few inches away where the back of the wardrobe ought to have been, but a long way off. Something cold and soft was falling on her. A moment later she found that she was standing in the middle of a wood at night-time with snow under her feet and snowflakes falling through the air.

Lucy felt a little frightened, but she felt very inquisitive and excited as well. She looked back over her shoulder and there, between the dark tree-trunks, she could still see the open doorway of the wardrobe and even catch a glimpse of the empty room from which she had set out.[1]'

In Realm Lefley has created digitally altered photographs, where the familiar place of the home becomes a portal into mythical realm.

[1] C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)



Carolyn Lefley – Artist’s Statement

“It was one of these mysterious fairy calls from out the void that suddenly reached Mole in the darkness, making him tingle through and through with its very familiar appeal, even while yet he could not clearly remember what it was…Home! That was what they meant, those caressing appeals, those soft touches wafted through the air, those invisible little hands pulling and tugging, all one way.”[1]

The commonplace domestic details are transformed into strange and uncanny vistas: the staircase becomes a giant’s causeway; the dreary nets become a night sky. In the half-light within, forgotten toys and Narnian furniture lay abandoned, waiting to be played with once more, igniting the spark of a forgotten longing.

In my new work Realm I have created digitally altered photographs, where the familiar place of the home becomes a portal into mythical realm.
[1] Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

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Carolyn Lefley is a photographic artist based in London. Solo exhibitions have included ‘Belonging’ at House Gallery, London 2008 and Drukarnia, Poland, part of Photomonth in Krakow 2008. Carolyn has also taken part in group shows, most recently this year at The Foundry, Norwich Arts Centre and Viewfinder Photography Gallery, London and previously at Dray Walk Gallery, London 2006 and Waterman's Art Centre, London 2005. Her work has featured in Flash Forward 2007, with an introduction by Susan Bright, published by the Magenta Foundation, Canada, by whom she was also awarded the Selected Winner (UK) in the Emerging Photographers category. In 2008 she was awarded a bursary from the National Media Museum to develop her photographic practice. Carolyn studied Fine Art at Coventry University and returned to London to complete her MA in Photography at TVU. She currently teaches photography at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge.

Her website is at http://www.carolynlefley.co.uk/