Dreamshook is a word that speaks to beliefs that founder or hopes that fail. Dreamshook is a word that casts a wider net, a word that gives depth to the promises of inspiration. Dreamshook is an adjective I coined in 2017 to describe when the wanderings of a sleeping or drifting brain stay with you for some time, for those days when you are haunted by sticky thoughts.

—Isabel Nolan

EXHIBITION INFORMATION

Dreamshook describes the feeling upon waking when reality is unsettled and strange or enticing possibilities linger awhile. In this pavilion, Nolan’s hand-tufted tapestries, sculptures, and drawings explore dream-states and narratives that blur the immaterial and the real. The work reflects her long-standing interest in the human impulse to find meaning, to structure our understanding of the universe. Nolan looks to the Middle Ages and early Renaissance as a time resonant of the present day; a turbulent era shaped by religious and political upheaval, plague, war and famine, alongside transformative cultural and technological change. One work depicts Aldo Manuzio (c.1450–1515), a printer based in Venice who urged people to choose words over weapons and whose publishing ethos and portable books revolutionised reading. Threaded throughout these works are references to humanism, Christianity and moments of crisis, optimism and change. Through vibrant colour and material intimacy, Dreamshook prompts us to wonder, to see resilience and connection, and perhaps find hope in the face of indifference or hate within this complex world.

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