The Drawing Room and Hayward Gallery Touring presents Not Without My Ghosts: The Artist As Medium, a major exhibition of artists and works inspired by mediumistic methodologies and their deep cultural history.
10th September to 1st November 2020
The Drawing Room
1-27 Rodney Place, London SE17 1PP
+44 (0) 20 7708 255 Wednesday to Sunday 12-6pm Booking required
Followed by several touring venues throughout the UK until December 2021
Bringing together more than 30 international artists from the 19th century to the present day, it explores the changing historical and aesthetic terms of artistic engagement with mediumship, from perceived spiritual inspiration and creation during séances and trances, to practices of automatism, channelling, and paranormal investigation, whilst also considering clairvoyant practices in relation to the history of feminism.
The exhibition takes as its starting point the visionary work of William Blake and the largely forgotten Victorian spirit artists Georgiana Houghton, Anna Mary Howitt and Barbara Honywood, whose work based on experiences and communication with the world of the spirits was strikingly at odds with prevailing traditions of artistic expression. The exhibition progresses onto Surrealist experiments with automatism, and moves through the 20th Century where work by artists Austin Osman Spare, Ithell Colquhoun and Cameron draws on techniques of automatism combined with an interest in ritualised forms of occultism. Concluding with works from artists such as Suzanne Treister, Lea Porsager and Louise Despont, Not Without My Ghosts demonstrates how contemporary artists are using the power of the unseen and the ghostly to explore the radical ambiguities of the world around them.
Participating artists are: William Blake; Cameron; Ann Churchill; Ithell Colquhoun; Louise Despont; Casimiro Domingo; Madame Fondrillon; Chiara Fumai; Madge Gill, Susan Hiller; Barbara Honywood; Georgiana Houghton; Anna Mary Howitt; Victor Hugo; Augustin Lesage; Pia Lindman; Ann Lislegaard; André Masson; Grace Pailthorpe; František Jaroslav Pecka; Olivia Plender; Sigmar Polke; Lea Porsager; Austin Osman Spare; Yves Tanguy and Suzanne Treister with The Museum of Blackhole Spacetime Collective.
Noviadi Angkasapura; Robert Barry; Vidya Gastaldon; Jock Macdonald and Emma Talbot will be included in the exhibition tour.
Not Without My Ghosts: The Artist As Medium is a Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition from Southbank Centre, London, developed in partnership with Drawing Room, curated by Lars Bang Larsen, Simon Grant and Marco Pasi. It will travel to Blackpool, Sheffield and Swansea later in the year.
For more information of a panel discussion relating to this exhibition on October 1st 2020 go to: The Unseen & the Ghostly: female legacies of Spiritualism & Surrealism.
For a review in The Art Newspaper by Louisa Buck visit Séances and spiritual awakenings abound in travelling exhibition exploring the ‘artist as medium published on 29th October 2020.