I Never Promised You a Wonder Land

As the Artist in Residence, Steph Huang presents I Never Promised You a Wonderland, a new set of installations at Artworks Project Space in Walthamstow. 

During the residency, she explored the absurdity of life and the fragility of human beings through looking at certain belief systems seen as universal across all cultures of mankind. Setting aside religion, there are numerous ordinary objects designated to offer us false hopes and reassurances. The blind belief we tend to have in objects such as Bonsais, mineral stones, horseshoes, four-leaf clovers, or rabbit’s foot have created expectancy in our subconscious mind and keep us weathering through the unknown future. Worshipping such deified objects evokes memories to found emotional responses and further changes our neural functioning. I chose certain symbols that represent just such responses and painted them into small wooden altars. 

At the centre of the exhibition is a moving model train with pine needles in the cargo, traveling through a miniature wonderland of stones made of chicken wire, plaster and paint. The constant motion of the train on the oval rail symbolises the flow of life. Alongside, there is a golden made-to-measure hotel luggage trolley, a stand-in for the fast paced lifestyle and a reminder of how people constantly check-in and out of our lives. Silkscreen printed aluminium sheets and lottery balls sit against the walls, standing in as flashbacks of old memories that she captured for years. 

Humorist R. E. Shay is credited with the witticism, “ Depend on the rabbit’s foot if you will, but remember it didn’t work for the rabbit.”