Annette Messager's art of magic

'I like to tell stories... children's stories are monstrous,' Annette Messager has said, and much of her work of the last four decades is based on toys and childhood. Remains II (Family (II), 2000. Photograph: Felix Clay/Felix Clay

Messager's Chimaeras, 1982-84, 'take the shapes of things that nonetheless feel like hieroglyphs... as if the viewer is being offered a dream vocabulary', writes Siri Hustvedt Photograph: Marian Goodman Gallery

In the 1990s, Messager began to work with soft toys, a replacement for the real taxidermy birds she used in the 1970s. In Fables and Tales, 1991, the soft creatures are cruelly squeezed between piles of books. Photograph: Annette Messager/ADAGP

Detail from the installation dependence-independence, 1996. Photograph: Fiona Hanson/PA

But despite its childlike themes, 'there is nothing innocent anywhere in Messager's work', writes the Guardian critic Adrian Searle. Detail from dependence-independence, 1996. Photograph: Felix Clay/Felix Clay

'Messager's work can be obvious as well as secretive and strange,' says Searle. Articulated-disarticulated (2001-2) deals with mad cow disease, which ravaged France as well as the UK. Photograph: Felix Clay/Felix Clay

'She shares her theatricality, and her preoccupation with the play and fantasies of childhood, with artists as different as Mike Kelley and Susan Hiller.' Detail from Them and Us, Us and Them, 2000. Photograph: Felix Clay/Felix Clay

In Messager's work, 'things you cannot look at properly become all the more intriguing', says Adrian Searle. Detail from Them and Us, Us and Them, 2000. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

In 2005, Messager won a Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for Casino, a theatrical interpretation of the Pinocchio story. Detail from Casino, 2005. Photograph: Laurent LECAT/ADAGP

Inflated-Deflated, 2006, a 'wheezing, heaving mass of inflatable body parts and fanciful creatures', is the most recent work in the show. Photograph: Fiona Hanson/PA