Last Christmas, my family and I visited a Christmas Alice in Wonderland exhibition at Blenheim Palace. I have used images taken from last year as inspiration for this ongoing project at Newstead Abbey. I particularly like the warm lights contrasted with the striking, bold reds along with the antique sourced items to replicate the Alice in Wonderland fairy-tale but with a twist.
I like how the set designers have played around with scale placing large items in small spaces and vice versa as well as enlarging objects from their realistic sizes for example enlarging the White Rabbit to human scale. Similarly the giant mushrooms and tiny door with a world beyond. This was one of my favourite exhibitions I have been to due to the interactions that existed within each room and how the audience was able to engage throughout the walk round the Palace. One of my favourite rooms was the room with the eat me and drink me potions when Alice was trying to fit through the doors to get into the wonderland. In this rooms they used mirrors that played with proportions making you look slimmer, wider, taller and shorter along with interactive green screen TVs- placing the audience in the enchanted world.
This was a very useful exhibition to see for my ongoing project as I could see how other set designers have interpreted the fairy tale as opposed to Disney and see it come to life. I think the use of lighting through glistening and warm yellow toned fairy lights was a very important element illuminating certain aspects of the design, one idea which I have incorporated into our group project along with the labels and set design as reference throughout.
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