A Magical Menagerie

Recent work by Alice Evans

Assembly Arts, Lancaster, is thrilled to present A Magical Menagerie, a new exhibition by Alice Evans that showcases her multidisciplinary work across painting, poetry, film, music and installation. In addition to her visual art, the opening event will feature a live acoustic performance by The Arcane Hope, a self-driven music collective with a punk ethos, with whom Evans collaborates.

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 granted. The jazz-infused cadence reflects the trickster’s fluid and unpredictable nature, inviting audiences into a world of transformative possibility.  Evans’ paintings similarly embody the trickster’s boundary-breaking role, depicting mythical creatures that blur the line between human, animal, and the otherworldly. 

A Magical Menagerie is the latest curated exhibition at Assembly arts Gallery.  Enquiries are welcome from artists and organisations wishing to exhibit in any medium in the space dedicated to contemporary modern art.