Vintage Dolls

Vintage Dolls is a show of thirteen carefully staged and immaculately produced photographs that explore themes of childhood, the uncanny and enchantment. Set in a world somewhere between dreams and waking, haunted girls inhabit strange rooms alongside shadows, wolves, dolls, and forests, where they morph into princesses, witches and prisoners.

As unsettling and magical as they are, these images only ever present a limited childhood, not experienced from childhood itself but one that is remembered, analysed and documented from the safety of adulthood. These are recalled images and they hold none of the innocence or truly sinister immediacy of a child?s view of the world.

The works are handled intelligently and manage to avoid degenerating into fairy tale cliches, a situation that is entirely possible considering the current rash of Gothic, fairy tale and horror themes that have become so popular in contemporary culture in the past few years.

Vintage Dolls is a successful exhibition showcasing Everton?s skill in theme, composition and production and proves her insight in to the power of childhood symbolism. Most interesting about the show is the way it demonstrates, either deliberately or by accident, the power of the child in art. That we as visual creatures, having come to know the world through our own childhoods, relate so strongly to these symbols. The image of the child runs far deeper than aesthetics or titillation and is a subject that demands our full and proper attention, requiring the viewer to exercise a more thorough process of self reflection as to how we should react to depictions of children within contemporary culture.