Labyrinth - The Jungle Room

Peeking around the corner of the doorway you spy what at first glance appears to be a typical little boy's room. A bed, blue walls, a child sized wardrobe, a bedside table lamp. But something is strange here, something is definitely off kilter. There seems to an unusual amount of greenery - plants dominate the room. Glancing at the floor you notice that instead of woolly carpet or wooden floorboards, the ground exists entirely of rich dark earth. And growing, yes growing, from the rich dark earth are ferns. Spaced in clumps they appear to be invading from one side of the room, slowly creeping their presumptuous way to the other.

Following their upward growth your eyes alight on the vines clinging to the wall, snaking out across its blue surface. Ivy scales the bed posts and drapes over the pillow, resting after its arduous journey. Small fruit trees stand guard at each corner of the bed, twining their limbs around the posts, challenging anyone who dare disturb the slumbering ivy. Lypia claims the bedspread growing outwards in, soon to converge in the middle to complete an organic blanket. A rich earthy aroma pervades the room, like the damp karri forests after a downfall…. Cicadas chirrup loudly, and the room is alive with jungle noises.

A white-faced Frenchwoman in an 18th Century gown wafts in, then tries vainly to catch her own reflection in a tiny compact. Can ghosts see themselves in a mirror? She floats around the room as though completely insubstantial and then disappears as swiftly as she appeared.

A man dressed in fleecy pyjamas clutches a teddy bear and rocks back and forth on a tiny child-sized chair. "Where's my Mum?" he cries. He begs passers-by to look for her - she was due home from her Weight-Watchers meeting hours ago, but she's not here... He asks people to read him a story, but no-one is willing take the time. He tells us his name is Tom, and that he can't get to sleep because of the noise of a party across the road. "Are you going to the party?" he asks.

A drunken man enters, his tie askew. "Where's me boy?" he bellows, engulfing Tom in a hug. He notices the plants bursting out of the walls, the grass growing on the bed. "What have you done to your room?"

"Nothing.. I just woke up and it was like this.... Mum said she'd be home at 8," Tom tells him.

"Ah, your mother says a lot of things," his inebriated father replies before abandoning the boy to look for another beer.

At first the room seemed like a child's adventurous "Where the Wild Things Are" dream, but now it seems like a terrifying nightmare of disorientation and abandonment.

Jungle Room Soundscape: Scotty Johanson
Tom: Thomas Ford
Dad:
Trompe l'oeil: Samuel Fenton

The Rain Room