I recently went to the Pollock Toy museum, where I had heard that there was a room which most visitors avoided and often purposely did not go in for a fear of its contents. What is that? Turns out it’s nothing as sinister as a doll room. What is so eerie about dolls that would make visitors to a museum of childhood become uneasy and creeped out? I made the doll room my sole purpose of the visit to the museum.

Interestingly, I didn’t find the doll rooms as extreme as what was written, but I could understand that it was quite eerie. Maybe the main reason for this was that they were either displayed as if they were children, rather than as children’s toys or that some of them appear to be mini adults as would have been the norm for the date the dolls were made. The aged appearance of the dolls can also add to the feeling of unease – like you have opened up a door in a Victorian house and stumbled across a family who used to live there.

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According to Freud, it is the uncanny element that makes the feeling of unease. The uncanny can be defined as an unhomeliness, a feeling that the familiar has been rendered strange, and that all that was familiar has now become uncertain.

I’m very interested in the idea of life coming from an inanimate object, and that familiar objects can be made weird or eerie by the hint or possibility that they could transform or evolve into an independent life form.

The thought of dolls coming to life already exists in the fertile imagination of children and the writers of horror. The basis of the doll coming to life lies in its resemblance to the human – the closer the resemblance, the more likely it could be believed it is real. It is this closeness to reality that invokes the uncanny element into the doll.

These two images, although both of dolls, give a very different feeling. The top one is of a Reborn, and is meant to look like a newborn baby, mostly due to its fine veined skin, its limb positions and the way its body is able to contour. The bottom image is clearly of a plastic doll, with a degree of flexibility so it can sit down, but is obviously made of a rigid structure so it can be sat upright. One is marketed to adults, and the second to children.

Although Freud may have argued that all children wish their dolls could come to life, it is thought that this can become bizarre when adults want the same thing. Where it is acceptable for children to play make-believe with dolls, believing they are real, it is a different tale when adults do the same. It can be considered weird, creepy and outside of the social norm. It is this area that I find fascinating and hope to instil into my artwork.

One area that dolls become creepy is the horror movie. The independent life force that is projected onto the doll, giving it consciousness, makes this inanimate object a source of fear. One movie that does this brilliantly is the movie, Magic, a story of a ventriloquist who believes his dummy is alive, giving a frightening view into the mind of a man descending into madness but claiming the doll is responsible. The doubling effect of Anthony Hopkins and his dummy shows a symbiotic relationship between the two. The perceived telepathic relationship that is built between the characters make the atmosphere menacing – you cannot run or hide from yourself can you?

When looking for what induces a feeling of creepiness in contemporary art, I choose Cindy Sherman for achieving this. I went to the National Portrait Gallery to see the Cindy Sherman exhibition in the summer of 2019 and was struck by the dark eeriness that the photographs portrayed.

The photograph, to me, makes me uneasy for several reasons. The body and face resemble a real child, but the layered, masked appearance makes it look inanimate. There is something eerie about the eyes as they are of different sizes and shapes, adding an element of deformity to the image and the deep scratches on the face alongside the red matter poking out of the skull give it a feeling of damage and trauma.

One of the things I am working on in my art practice is to instil a feeling of fear and unease into my work, but also to try to provoke a feeling of empathy from the viewer towards the being (human/not human) that they are looking at. I have tried to put this duality of unease and empathy into my work, MySpace, where the use of infants produces a mixed reaction in the viewer. How much fear or unease can be provoked by the sight of headless babies? What is it about demonic children that is so disturbing? And even if they are threatening, would you have the same reaction to them as a demonic adult?

As with the dolls in my research, the baby figures are objects related to childhood so hold an element of innocence, but when this is distorted or taken out of context, then they begin to take on a more sinister meaning.