A Magical Menagerie

Assembly Arts is pleased to be showing A Magical Menagerie, a new exhibition by Alice Evans that showcases her multidisciplinary work across painting, poetry, film, music and installation.

Partly inspired by Lewis Hyde’s Trickster Makes This World: How Disruptive Imagination Creates Culture, this exhibition explores the trickster figure to think of art as a disruptor and truth-teller. Like the trickster, Evans’ work challenges rigid societal norms, exposing the flaws, contradictions, and

hierarchies that shape our world. Through mythological and liminal imagery, Evans amplifies the voices of the outsider—the mystic, the queer, the unconventional—creating space for those who live on the peripheries of societal expectations.  At the heart of the exhibition is Evans’ latest film, Laundry Isle, a jazz-inspired spoken word piece that mirrors the trickster’s disruptive energy. Through rhythmic improvisation and Brechtian-style cinematic techniques, the film draws attention to the constructed nature of reality, encouraging viewers to question the narratives they take for…