Performance.
Incubator of Dreams’
‘Incubator of Dreams’ is a durational performance that embodies the tension between the artificial and the organic, the sterile and the instinctive. Through the act of wrapping my head with layer upon layer of sellotape, I aim to create large cocoon-like forms that encapsulate the head. The sellotape, a synthetic material used to preserve and protect, becomes a paradoxical shield: it isolates the performer from external sensory input while enabling a deeper connection with personal inner worlds. The sticky sellotape turned outwards presenting a surface designed to capture, hold, secure.
As the performance progresses and the cocoon expands, it transforms into a grotesque exaggeration of an incubation chamber, a cocoon designed to incubate dreams and subconscious worlds. The tape gradually obscures and obliterates my recognisable features and a wilder stranger persona is created. Now I look like who I am.
Bio.
Isobel Smith
I completed an MA in Performance / Sculpture at the Royal College of Art in 2017 and since then, I have developed a unique practice inspired by a period of illness in my 20s. During this time, vivid dreams and visions blurred with reality, igniting a lifelong interest in the psychological aspects of human experience.
My work has been exhibited widely, including the Saatchi Gallery, where my bronze, purchased by Charles Saatchi, featured in his curated ‘Known Unknowns’ exhibition. I have also performed at the Tate Modern in response to the Joan Jonas exhibition along with other performance festivals in the UK and abroad.
My sculptures were included in the Royal Society of Sculptor’s Summer Show 2022 (selected by Isabel de Vasconcellos); Oxmarket Contemporary (selected by Laura Ford, Director of RSS); and ‘A Generous Space’, at Hastings Contemporary for Artist Support Pledge, (selected by Matthew Burrows). Slynde at Glynde Place 2024 (courtesy of The Scherzo Foundation), I am a member of The Royal Society of Sculptors and was recently awarded Arts Council DYCP funding for ‘Gathering the Bones’, to explore how my recent training as a psychodynamic counsellor and psychotherapist, might inform the work.