WONDER - Where Reality and Imaginary Collide

Lucy McLauchlan’s large-scale monochromatic paintings have covered multi-story buildings across Europe, gigantic billboards in China, huts in The Gambia, Detroit car parks and abandoned NYC subway tunnels. Taking imprints of the Herbert and its physical surroundings, she creates a form of documentation using canvases painted beyond the frame edge, and public murals in the city.

This series of storytelling works by Davy and Kristin McGuire is inspired by the seedy, shady underworld of ‘Film Noir’.

From fairies trapped in jam jars to seductresses kept in dolls-houses to pole dancers hijacking religious iconography.

The pieces ask the audience to wonder whether they should gaze in reverence or shame or allow for an all together more nuanced and unresolved perspective.

Edie Jo Murray is a UK-based creative entity exploring the subjectivity of reality from a neurodivergent perspective.

Edie Jo Murray uses augmented reality to explore and discover hidden wonders of the Herbert’s stores and collection.

She uses digital media as a device to examine the artworks on show, and to interact and uncover creatures from the Natural Sciences collection alongside other imagined curiosities.

One of Edie Jo Murray's artworks uses a 3D scan of a taxidermy duck from the Herbert’s Natural Sciences collection as a starting point to consider ideas of digital preservation.

Similarly, Antonio Roberts distorts characters using illustration software, separating them out into individual parts, to be randomly re-arranged and re-imagined.

Antonio Roberts is an artist and curator based in Birmingham, UK. His practices explore what ownership and authorship mean in an age impacted by digital technology.

Julia Snowdin creates unexpected and unimaginable spaces for communities, families, friends and strangers to come together for a shared experience and to leave with a story.

'Light Pavilion' allowed visitors to play, discover and relax - to walk onto the deck, take a seat or lie down in the middle of the structure, and become immersed in the installation.

"Visitors could interact with the pavilion by touching the buttons and turning the dials to change the lights above their heads." - Julia Snowdin

Illustrator, Ben Javens invited visitors to go beyond the gallery wall like Alice through the looking glass. His work incorporated a salon hang of his illustration pieces alongside works from the Herbert’s collection. Acting as a gateway to a life-size diorama installation, audiences could crawl through a gold-framed aperture to discover a hidden landscape with soundtrack and more.

Ben Javens invited visitors to step through the gallery wall into a world that is slightly unsettling, perhaps even a hallucination, as with many folktales.

"I’ve made works in relation to those from the Herbert's collection. This aims to enhance the story of the character trapped in a different world." - Ben Javens