Rabbit Hole

"Yes, a white wardrobe can be a rabbit hole. That’s definitely unusual!” Sophie Michael’s moving image work finds its unique meeting point in the connection of proto-cinematic, abstract experiments with the development of early years speech in children. As such, ‘Rabbit Hole’ centres on two distinct perceptual phenomena that are magical and seemingly beyond rational explanation. The images are made up of collages on sugar paper which reproduce chromatropes, abstract colour slides used during the pre-cinema Magic Lantern shows of the late 19th century. As these colourful, geometric collages spin and create hypnotic patterns, we hear the voice of a young child (the artist’s three year old son) talking in solitude, testing out new combinations of words to depict a high place in the room on which origami rabbits sit. His words are shown on-screen, at the centre of swirling, mandala-like patterns, lending associations between this grasping for language, the wonder of proto-cinematic spectacles, and the psychedelic-era experimental films of artists like Jordan Belson, James Whitney and Hy Hirsch, made in the 1950s and 60s.

— Herb Shellenberger, film programmer

UK, 2021

HD video, Stereo, 1:1

3’40

Voice Nicholas Munks. Animation, sound, edit by Sophie Michael. Post production sound by Mick Richie

With special thanks to Candida Powell-Williams and The Rectory Projects

Previous presentations

2022

8, group exhibition at 11 Avenue Studios, Sydney Mews, London

Pandemonium & Order, SENSE at Cluster Art Fair, OXO Tower Wharf, London

2021

Here in this Room, group exhibition, Sheffield DocFest 2021 Arts Programme (installation and online screening)

COUNTER-FLOW, two person exhibition with Candida Powell-Williams, The Rectory Projects, London

Installation view at COUNTER-FLOW, The Rectory Projects, London, 2021