Scandals in Bohemia

A new film about Rosaleen Norton – Australia’s once notorious ‘Witch of Kings Cross – is a wonderful celebration of an artist who took control of her own story and created a unique body of work

The Witch of Kings Cross

Dir Sonia Bible, US 2021 On digital platforms

For erotic esoteric art in the 20th century, Britain had Austin Osman Spare, the US had Marjorie Cameron – and Australia had Rosaleen (Roie) Norton (1917-1979). The Witch of Kings Cross tells her story – not as a mere documentary, nor a biopic, but as a work of dramatic art in itself. It’s beautifully filmed with, at its heart, highly erotic, highly expressive interpretations of ritual dance. Actress Kate Elizabeth Laxton plays Norton, looking remarkably like her, as she dances naked with Pan, Lilith and Lucifer. There are interviews with old friends and current academics; readings from Norton’s own notebooks; headlines and news stories from the press of the day: “Artist and lover arrested after photographs of bizarre sex act”, “Worldfamous conductor disgraced in pornography scandal”; old footage of Norton herself – and there is a startling cornucopia of her drawings and paintings.

Rosaleen Norton’s life was

She’d say she was born with pointed ears and a blue mark on her knee

a battle with authority (see FT224:48-54). She was born in New Zealand to a middle-class family. She’d later say that she was born in a thunderstorm, with pointed ears and a blue mark on her left knee, which she took as a sign: witch marks. When she was seven her family moved to Sydney, where she insisted on sleeping in a tent in the garden. She was rebellious as a child, committing herself to a Pagan outlook on life at the age of 13. Supporting herself by modelling, in 1934 she went to art school, where she was taught by sculptor Rayner Hoff – himself a very Pagan character: his Crucifixion of Civilisation, with a female Christ, designed for a war memorial but never built, was condemned by a Catholic archbishop as “insulting to God”.

Kings Cross, where Norton spent most of her life, was the area of Sydney populated by artists, poets, dancers, bohemians, mavericks, homosexuals, transvestites – the outcasts of a very conservative society. There were nightclubs, strippers, cafés open all night, jazz; it was the intellectual and cultural environment that she craved. She was “an artist of the dark side,” says Norton’s biographer, occult historian Nevill Drury.

Norton met Gavin Greenlees, a talented young poet; they became lovers. He was gay, which was illegal – as was practising magic, which they did together. The rundown house where they lived, along with others, was often raided by the police on the charge of vagrancy – defined as not having enough money to support yourself – which the police routinely used to harass people.

In 1949, aged 31, she had her first major exhibition in a gallery at Melbourne University – and was charged with exhibiting indecent images. In court, the Crown prosecutor said that “work of this sort could deprave and corrupt the morals of those who saw them.” Norton’s response was classic: “Obscenity, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.” Instead of apologising or backing down she explained what her work was about: “Yes, these artworks show people naked; yes, these artworks show occult practices” – and then adding: “I participate in this sort of activity, and these are the beings who visit me.” (She would meet the gods and goddesses in a trance state.) Astonishingly she won the court case.

In 1952 publisher Walter Glover brought out a book of Norton’s art and Greenlees’s poetry, and again she hit the headlines. Taken to court, Norton defended her work in terms of Jungian archetypes – but the judge ruled that two of the plates in the book must be removed or blacked out. She sent copies of her book to Einstein, Jung, Gerald Gardner and CS Lewis, and received positive responses.

But this was to lead to further scandal. Sir Eugene Goossens, the British composer and conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, came across The Art of Rosaleen Norton and contacted her. He already had an interest in the occult; they became lovers and he took part in sex-magick rituals with her and Greenlees.

But a journalist had stolen from her home a bundle of passionate letters between them which described their sex-magick rituals in detail, and had taken them to the police. On his trips back to London Goossens would go to occult bookshops and Soho art galleries; when he returned to Australia in March 1956 – a year after being knighted by the Queen – he was stopped at Sydney airport, his bags were searched and pornographic materials were found. His career destroyed, he returned to England.

Norton exhibited more paintings, and the police confiscated and burned two of them. This was a clash between the Christian conservative culture of 1950s Australia and “a strong, sexually active artistic woman who identifies as a witch,” says the film’s writer Jack Sargeant.

Instead of running away from the media attention, or making her art and her behaviour more socially acceptable, she embraced her persona, openly talking about her life as the Witch of Kings Cross in magazine articles headlined “Confessions of a Witch” and “I’m Glad I’m a Witch”. By embracing the stereotype, she took control of

the situation, as the film says, defanging the media.

“She was an artist, she was a performer, and she created herself, she invented herself,” says Australian artist George Gittoes.

Her witchcraft was certainly her own creation, beginning in her childhood. Her sex-magick was influenced by Crowley, her astonishing artwork by the Kabbalah and by Jung.

Rosaleen Norton’s artwork is shocking, not for its overt sexuality but in its intensity; you can’t look at it without being drawn into it, and changed by it.

In the artwork, the dance, the imagery and in its intimate portrayal of Norton’s life, The Witch of Kings Cross is a wonderful evocation of the esoteric and the erotic.

David V Barrett

★★★★★

Broil

Dir Edward Drake, US 2020 On digital platforms

Somewhat ironically, for a film with a culinary title and a skilled chef as a main character, Broil isa perfect example of an over-egged pudding: not entirely unenjoyable but offering nothing we haven’t tasted before and weighed down by its ingredients. The opening is a little bland, as schoolgirl Chase is sent to live with her strict grandfather in his improbably remote and ostentatious mansion, but the upfront way in which the supernatural elements are presented is refreshingly zesty. The film simmers as we are introduced to the large cast of characters, produces a few bubbles as they are drawn together, but then ultimately goes cold when none of their storylines pays off in a satisfactory manner. The meat of the film concerns a power-play in a family of quasi-vampires, their backstory adding a distinct tang which might have saved the dish were it not for the questionable mix of garnishes which end up diluting the flavour. Too much of the action is wasted in aperitifs and hors d’oeuvres, leaving the main course feeling distinctly underwhelming.

Martin Parsons

★★★★★