EXHIBITION: Wilma Cruise – The Alice Diaries - A series of sketches and scribbled notes (The Alice Diaries themselves) greets you as you begin your viewing of painter and sculptor Wilma Cruise’s exhibition.

VENUE: Circa On Jellicoe, Rosebank, until August 25

It’s a brilliant way to begin, as it helps, informally, to explain the vision Cruise had in mind, without all the dense theoretical bumf that your average gallery visitor neither understands nor cares about.

There are rough outlines of figures completed in more detail and on a larger scale elsewhere.

There are insights into Cruise’s mind – “Alice has become my alter ego” – alongside more prosaic details such as, “Giant Rabbit trolley (phone Nick)” and “Small Baboon – arrange with Carlo”.

That down-to-earth essence may impact the way you view the pieces. Said Small Baboon is sitting on a plinth at the furthest point of the downstairs exhibition area, mournfully staring out of the window at passers-by. He appears to be day-dreaming; you may want to clap your hands in front of him to help him snap out of his funk.

On the wall nearby, Baby Series 1 is more disturbing than beautiful – the images are grotesque, as are the two large-scale self-portraits.

Follow a curving ramp around the outside of the building (the architecture is a work of art in itself) to the middle floor, where more babies – scores of little ceramic suckers this time, part of a work called Cradle – are strewn across the floor, all armless and, possibly, all very slightly different in terms of leg posture, colour and the way they’re arranged on the floor.

 If you’re paying close attention, it’s possible to find one pig-faced infant with hair (all the others are bald). It’s not highlighted in any way, so it’s oddly satisfying if you do manage to spot it.

As you enter the oval room in which this part of the exhibition is housed, there are quotes from Alice In Wonderland scrawled on the wall. Behind you, a hand-drawn diagram explains the layout of the exhibit and provides the names of the indivi-dual pieces – practicality alongside curiosity.

The overall effect, especially if you’re alone in the room, is rather eerie. It’s like you’ve stumbled on the requisite hidden basement in a serial killer’s house.

 More theoretically minded folk will tell you there are important messages about the complex relationships between humans and animals in the subtext here, and those are easy enough to accept as you see the way the pieces are arranged, with larger sculptures (of animals) on the edge of and in the midst of the boundless batch of babies.

Mull on that if you will, or be inspired, as Cruise was, by the enduring surrealism of Alice In Wonderland and being, through Cruise’s art, in a context that’s as close to what’s beyond the looking glass
as you’re likely to find.