The Omnipotence of Dream

The Omnipotence of Dream was an exhibition at the Salford Museum and Gallery in 2024-25 curated by Angela alongside David Hancock, Dawn Woolley and Paula Chambers.

The curators asked 16 international artists to respond to some of the Surrealist works from the Museum’s collection.

Angela responded to Eileen Agar’s 1980 painting Room with a View of the Moon.

Shabtis for Eileen

Shabtis for Eileen begins with a visit to the Egyptology collection at the Manchester Museum. A drawer of tiny shabtis – clay casts, vaguely human in form that would have acted as servants to people of importance in the afterlife.

It occurs to me that an artist might make use of a set of these as creative and personal assistants in their own eternity.

These porcelain shabtis total 401. One for each day of the year plus 36 supervisors. They are cast in fine porcelain directly from the ones in Manchester Museum, facilitated via 3d scanning and printing technology. The final stage in the making – the casting of the ceramic - is a process almost identical to the one which would have been used to fashion the 3000 year-old originals.

Once fired, each is shabtis is individually finished with its own additions of embroidery and contemporary found objects. Useful items such as safety pins and keys are held for the opportune moment should Agar need them, along with more obscure object trouvés like discarded remnants from crystal chandeliers. The legacy of Agar’s Room with a view of the Moon, is evident in occasional visual interludes in both form and attached vignettes.    

Eileen Agar indulged in collecting. Surrounding herself with found objects, she used these as triggers when employing the surrealist techniques of collage and assemblage. Her home/studio was a constantly changing repository of things which would be employed in her paintings or objects.

I think she would approve.