Alice Sherlock

In essence, my practice centers around the idea of aural verbatim storytelling, focusing on locality, the everyday, and the mundane. I take recorded familial conversations discussing childhood stories and turn them into a visual language. My work is not a literal translation of these stories but a romantised, fantasied, bittersweet look at nostalgia.
A lot of my work revolves around domestic scenes and items people are very familiar with - such as tables, chairs and fence posts. By including these items it gives the audience a way into my work and is something that they already have connections with, I think this allows them to then go deeper into the storytelling aspect of my practice. Working across disciplines such as painting, sculpture and print allows me to explore storytelling in a more nuanced way. The delicate etched line on a print engages with an almost forgotten memory whereas the thick brush mark on a canvas speaks to a more playful surreal memory that has been exaggerated and elaborated on with every retelling of the story.
I work on being playful in my practice, adding humor and not taking anything too seriously. I see my practice almost as an act of translation turning an aural story into a visual language. Once the story has been filtered through me it often becomes more ambiguous and often exaggerated as stories often do when being retold. This then extends the parameters for more surreal and uncanny elements, playing with perspective to create an imagined world. I sketch whilst listening to the recorded verbatim recording I then draw from the drawing which makes the drawing more playful. This allows me to worry less about the image being an accurate depiction.
My work isn’t an accurate reconstruction of the past, but a subjective romanticized fantasy. I often work with the same imagery using them as repeated motifs that appear in different pieces. These include a pair of heeled shoes usually attached to an abnormally long pair of legs in white
tights. A chips pan on fire on a stove top, an angel fish, footprints leading away from a section of the work. I also add a fly on a wall into most of my pieces representing the audience being a part of this imaged world I have created.