The greatest magic show ever right before your very eyes: an installation for a Blackpool B&B

Magic has a long history in Blackpool, having hosted numerous professional magic shows, and today housing one of the largest yearly gatherings of conjurors worldwide. Magicians intuitively grasp one of the rarely discussed aspects of art and performance: that it happens in the spectators’ minds. No matter what a performer or artist might do or say, it is spectators who build, choose, interpret, navigate, get lost and find their way, and thus shape an event that is entirely unique. This work, entitled 'The world’s greatest magic show right before your very eyes', brings together magic with another still mysterious mental process - dreaming. Hanging on the wall of the B&B room are a number of discreetly framed images and objects, all suggesting illusions and magic feats yet to be realised: they offer tantalising glimpses of vanishes, apparitions and impossibilities. The B&B guest is invited to cover up these artworks at night, in preparation for sleep: those magical feats might perhaps find material form in their dreams, transformed and re-interpreted. It is during sleep that this artwork unfolds.