We Are Only Partly Real, 2025 | Michelle Marie Forrest

We Are Only Partly Real is a Virtual Reality exhibition commissioned as a pilot project by Spike Island, supported by digital artist and researcher Stephen Gray, and funded by the University of Bristol’s AHRC Impact Acceleration Award

Created in conversation with the artists Michelle Marie Forrest and Steve Dutton the commission sought to explore the potential of Virtual Reality not only as a platform to exhibit art, but also as an artistic medium in itself.

We Are Only Partly Real, 2025

VR Installation. Video walk through of Day and Night cycles

Inspired by shared interests in the complexities of communication, Dutton and Forrest work with grids, data, text and colour, often embedding multiple references as cyphers within their work, to play with viewer’s feelings and memories. The exhibition draws upon various filmic references – including Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz, David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, and Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar – using fantasy and surrealism as a means to investigate language and other forms of communication.

Split into four interconnected zones, the virtual exhibition brings together real-world painting, drawing, sculpture and moving image; digital adaptations of real-world artworks; and new Virtual Reality artworks made specifically for this context. The result is a hybrid exhibition that uses Virtual Reality as a mechanism to explore artistic practice.

The notion of time is central to the commission, which features both a ‘daytime’ and ‘night-time’ version of the exhibition. Upon certain triggers, day turns into night, and viewers enter a dream-like state, where reality fades and imagination takes hold. This dual exhibition invites viewers to question their perception of reality, while acknowledging the potentials and pitfalls of Virtual Reality as a creative platform for both making and exhibiting art.