Cecilia Reeve debuts immersive animation installation ‘Sleepwalking’
Skwigly
London-based artist and animator Cecilia Reeve presents her first major site-specific installation, Sleepwalking, which opens on 10 October at Soho Revue during Frieze Week. The immersive multi-plane projection explores an animated, hypnotic, intangible space between reality and dreams, inviting viewers into a suspended, liminal world.
Soho Revue, 14 Greek Street, London W1D 4DP
10 October 2025- 10 January 2026
Private View: 10th October, 6-8pm
Wednesdays- Saturdays 12-6pm
Free admission
‘Sleepwalking’ takes inspiration from the Surrealist belief that cinema is a manifestation of the unconscious: a darkened room in which viewers are transported from their physical bodies into a world of images. The animation opens with shadowed hands drawing heavy, Lynchian theatre curtains. From there, a puppet-like shadow play then unfolds: a glowing figure enters a reflective, dreamlike room inhabited by bird and fish forms. Anonymous hands manipulate the space, interrogating ideas of agency and authorship.
The work is laden with symbolic imagery of transformation and rebirth. Birds and fish appear interchangeably as archetypal figures of the unconscious: the fish evoking ancient, primordial beings; the birds suggesting freedom and flight. Using her own body as a reference, Cecilia performs within this dreamworld, blurring the boundary between self and environment as she inhabits a space of dissolution and transformation.
The installation combines watercolour on cell frames, with hand-drawn digital frame-by-frame sequences and painted backgrounds to construct a richly layered and tactile environment. Projected through panels of translucent scrim fabric the imagery is refracted across surfaces and reflected in the glossy floor, creating an otherworldly sense of depth and disorientation.
Accompanied by original music by London based electronic music artist Sam Black (aka Slacker). Past releases with labels including Soft Raw and Erosion, he also runs the label Psuedoym Records. Sound design and mixing are by award winning composer and sound designer Eleanor Fineston- Robertson, past clients include Barbican, National Trust and the Courtauld Gallery.
About Cecilia Reeve
After completing her MA in Animation at the Royal College of Art in 2023, Cecilia was awarded a residency at Revue Studios (2023). She held her first solo show of Paintings and Animation at Twilight Contemporary in March 2025. Her graduate film ‘Porous’ was screened at several Academy Award-qualifying festivals, including LIAF and Aesthetica, and won the ArtsThread Global Graduation Prize in collaboration with Gucci. The film also received a Vimeo Staff Pick. Cecilia is represented for commercial work by SNYDER, her past clients include the Financial Times, Wandsworth Borough and Holland Park Opera House.
Cecilia’s textural and atmospheric practice is rooted in states of emotion, longing, and dreaming. Her work often creates serene yet unsettling environments, drawing inspiration from the literary tradition of Magical Realism and the fleeting moments where reality and dream overlap; the ephemeral shadows we leave in the spaces we pass through. Water immersion and reflection become a metaphor for the unconscious mind—fragmenting the body, suspending it out of time.
Sleepwalking will be presented on Soho Revue’s Second Floor, 14 Greek Street, London W1D 4DP, opening during Frieze Week on 10 October 2025, and will run for three months. Free Admission.