"Shortly after completing 'House of Sleep', Gollon began work on his series, 'In the Shadow of the Pleasure Dome' (1998-1999), which evolved as a natural progression, stylistically and metaphysically, from the former work. Other inspiration for the series came from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s (1772-1834) poem Kubla Khan and the Frankie Goes to Hollywood song Welcome to the Pleasure Dome (released in 1985), also based on Coleridge’s poem. The concept of a “pleasure dome” as representative of a parallel universe, a place where anything (and nothing) can happen and all is beyond the control of normal expectations is a place tailor-made to Gollon’s mode of expression. Here the absurd meets the ridiculous and shakes hands with the macabre [...]" Art historian Tamsin Pickeral writing in her biography of Chris Gollon 'Humanity in Art' (Hyde & Hughes, 2010), endorsed by Bill Bryson OBE.

“Famously, the opening scene of the film ‘Cabaret’ is a tableau vivant of Otto Dix’s ‘Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden’, and through his own reading and film, and via works by German artists of the 1920s and 30s, Chris Gollon took an interest in the burlesque cabaret of Berlin between the wars, and also in the success (or not) of recent efforts to resurrect it. He even painted two cover versions of the Dix painting, one on canvas, one on paper, both now in private collections. In the 1980s, he would occasionally visit 'Madame Jo-Jo's' in its fashionable heyday, the famous transvestite cabaret venue run by the larger-than-life Ruby Venezuela, in the heart of London's Soho nightlife. Gollon also liked the novels and short stories of Hermann Hesse, in particular the collection 'Strange News from Another Star' and the novel 'Steppenwolf'. When I first knew Chris in the 1980s, he often spoke about the scene in 'Steppenwolf' when narrator Harry Haller is taken by the mysterious musician Pablo to The Magic Theatre, a place real or imagined, where he could experience the fantasies that existed in his mind. It was a place where anything could happen, a notion that appealed to Gollon throughout his life. This literary image from Hesse had a long influence on many of his paintings, particularly those with mysterious figures in doorways welcoming us into another world, should we be bold enough to cross the threshold.”
David Tregunna, CHRIS GOLLON: Beyond the Horizon' exhibition curator.