Lifting the veil to worlds less ordinary
A clutch of new exhibitions celebrate artists’ ability to access other layers of reality and delve into the uncanny and the unseen, writes Jenny White...
VISIONS from beyond our ordinary reality are the theme of several exhibitions taking place this month. In Swansea’s Glynn Vivian Gallery, the marvellous Not Without My Ghosts presents work ranging from the late 19th century to the present, looking at how artists have engaged with séances, channelling, automatic writing and other paranormal investigations.
The touring exhibition was created by Hayward Gallery at the Southbank Centre in partnership with Drawing Room, a not-for-profit gallery, library, shop and online resource dedicated to opening up the world of contemporary drawing to everyone. This show sprang from Drawing Room’s interest in Victorian spirit artist Georgiana Houghton and quickly expanded to include a rich seam of artists who, like her, use art as a way to access the unseen.
Intimate sketches of spirit faces by the great visionary William Blake are included, along with pieces by Houghton and fellow Victorian spirit artist Barbara Honywood. Their work, based on experiences and communication with the world of the spirits, was strikingly at odds with prevailing traditions of artistic expression at the time.
The exhibition also chronicles the Surrealists’ experiments with automatism – a method of making art by surrendering conscious control and letting the unconscious guide you – and goes on to look at how 20th century artists like Austin Osman Spare, Ithell Colquhoun and Cameron combined techniques drawn from automatism with an interest in occultist rituals.
Moving into the present day, works by Emma Talbot, Suzanne Treister, Lea Porsager and Louise Despont demonstrate how contemporary artists continue to use the power of the unseen and the uncanny to explore the ambiguities of the world around them.
While each artist’s vision of the unseen is unique, curious affinities emerge between the works – repeated patterns, kaleidoscopic layers, swirls and tendrils, heightened colours – it’s hard not to feel that their experience of otherworlds is in some ways consistent.
“That was the most exciting thing about it,” says Gillian Fox, assistant curator for Hayward Gallery Touring. “This exhibition spans 200 years, yet work from 140 years ago has strong similarities with work being made today and draws on the same kind of influences. I found that quite reassuring and they’re beautiful.
“Every time I put the show up, the more connections I see. It’s not as if it’s a linear narrative – it’s as if it’s all coexisting at the same time.”
Equally intriguing are the stories that lie behind each artist’s work. There’s August Lesage (18711954), a French coalminer who became an artist at the age of 35 after he heard a voice deep within the mine instructing him to paint. He worked in a trance-like state, in which he believed his hand was guided by his dead sister. The result was work of dizzying complexity depicting buildings he believed existed on cosmic planes.
Then there’s Ann Churchill (b.1944), who enters a meditative state to make complex, colourful paintings that are part of her ongoing spiritual journey, and Vidya Gastaldon (b.1974) who enters into an almost mediumistic state in order to paint mystical and visionary layers over paintings she has found at car boot sales. She says she ‘heals’ the paintings by adding her own cast of flora, fauna, spirits and monsters.
From occult philosophy to mediumship, the array of works old and new exemplifies the power of the artist to embrace new ways of seeing and enter altered states.
Glynn Vivian has also programmed two exhibitions by two Wales-based artists whose work responds to the themes in Not Without My Ghosts. Fern Thomas’ exhibition Spirit Mirror draws on her research into local suffragist, politician, philanthropist and spiritualist Winifred Coombe Tennant (1874 – 1956), whose home in Neath was originally located not far from where Thomas grew up.
The artist brings together her own work and works from the gallery’s permanent collection to consider themes such as mythology and folklore. The gallery is also showing the work of Zoe Preece, who creates perfect porcelain simulacra of everyday objects such as kitchen utensils, lending them a ghostly and meditative beauty.
Meanwhile, Otherworlds, the new exhibition opening at Cardiff MADE tonight, is billed as a “collection of works which delve deep into views and states of being which parallel or allow access to worlds which sit outside the ordinary.”
It features paintings by seven artists based in south and west Wales whose work demonstrates an ability to conjure, invent and use the pictorial space as a portal through which fantastic or dreamlike states can be visualised. The works draw on film, science-fiction, animation and imagination, creating invigorating and sometimes unsettling alternative realities that have much to say about the reality we live in.
The scope is broad – Jo Berry’s reference post-apocalyptic Zone of the famous Tarkovsky film Stalker, while Suzan Adams riffs on the idea of receiving communications from other worlds, fusing mysticism and images of modern technology.
Tess Gray and Charlotte Brisland play with the tensions between humans and the natural world, highlighting our inability to truly understand our tentative place in it, while for Will Roberts the painter is the explorer, adventurer and fool – dressed in a space suit and striving to control the world by capturing it in paint.
Zena Blackwell’s paintings conjure an uncanny world where animals and children appear to telepathically connect, sharing a secret rapport, and Emily Unsworth White and Richard James evoke a lyrical and meditative state in which consciousness expands beyond the known.
“The exhibition shows us what painting can do as a medium and as a space to reflect on where we are now, by taking us (the viewer) on a journey to the ‘elsewhere’,” says gallery director Zoë Gingell.
“Ultimately, it is the realm of painting as a space for narrative, a space removed from the everyday through its very material ability and the tricks of technique to convey whatever version of reality the artist chooses to present – thus giving sight to dreams, fears and revels in the very spaces on the edges of the conscious or known worlds, allowing us, as the viewer, to transcend and walk among it.”
The show includes several special events – a series of Wednesday artists’ talks running in February and March, Charlotte Brisland and art writer/curator Harry Heuser in conversation on March 5 and an exciting closing event on March 11 when the L’A.R.T. Live Arts Response Team will react to Otherworlds.
“Our aim is to try to entice people back into seeing work in the space, although we’re also going to live stream the event,” says Zoe. “The Arts Council Wales is funding it, which is really great. We want to get people back into seeing the work in new, exciting ways.”
■ Not Without My Ghosts runs until Sunday, March 13, at Glynn Vivian Gallery. In Reverence and Spirit Mirror run until Tuesday, March 22, at Glynn Vivian Gallery. Otherworlds runs until Friday, March 11, at Cardiff MADE Gallery. More details at www.cardiffmade.com and www.glynnvivian.co.uk
The exhibition shows us what painting can do as a medium and as a space to reflect on where we are now, by taking us (the viewer) on a journey to the ‘elsewhere’