The animated characters of Walt Disney have become instilled in the fabric of popular culture since the 1950's and are known in varying degrees by pretty much everyone in western society aged 9 to 90. The glibly innocent lives and storylines of Mickey, Minnie and Pluto were relayed constantly to us, as they were to our parents and as they possibly will be to our children, while the life of their creator is, in comparison, hidden and shrouded in myth.

It is both the myths and realities surrounding Disney's life, and death, that London Fieldworks have taken as the starting point for their new project Hibernator: Prince of the Petrified Forest, which premiered at Beaconsfield in Vauxhall, south London, as part of the Beaconsfield Commissions 2007.

An animation comprising a highly realistic animatronic hybrid of Walt's face and his creation Bambi's body, set against a seemingly post apocalyptic landscape, make up the basis of the film, with an overlaid monologue discussing Disney's obsessions of varying taste, legality and decency, and the stories surrounding them.

The work examines his apparent desire to be cryogenically frozen and his interest in setting up countrywide American cryogenic 'high street shops', his secret relationship with the US Army during the Second World War, the 'accidental' production of Communist sex cult films in his studio's and the possible dubious origins of  his most famous character Mickey.

Hibernator is not a biographical account of Disney's life, but at the same time is not entirely fictitious. It is a reworking of various stories about him, some true some not, but morphed together in an inherently Disney style. Walt was famous for re-telling fables, for weaving various elements of mythology and tales passed down from generation to generation into his films, and this idea is one referenced by the artists involved inHibernator. The work comes together to produce a dark, enchanting and myth sustaining epilogue to Walt's life - something I'm sure he would have approved of.