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Vivienne Roberts logo

Follow me on instagram for news, events and thoughts on the art I love.

mediumisticart

Curating, writing/researching, collecting mediumistic and visionary art. London based
vivienneroberts.com
@madge.gill @georgianahoughton

@tate #emilykamkngwarray show is sublime. @emilyka @tate #emilykamkngwarray show is sublime. @emilykamekngwarreye 

“Kngwarray’s art is grounded in her understanding of her Country and of the Dreamings originating there. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, the concept of the Dreaming or Creation time is fundamental to their social, cultural and spiritual practices. Ancestral beings, popularly known as Dreamings, manifest themselves in Country and its many diverse life forms. Plants, animals and natural phenomena, such as wind, fire and rain, travel across Country, shaping landscapes as they go. Important places and their Dreamings are celebrated in songs and ceremonies.”

The images are a tiny part of this extraordinary exhibition and show mainly her Alhalker Suite from 1993 consisting of 22 acrylic on canvas panels. 

“The ecosystem of Alhalker Country is typical of the arid zone of central Australia. It includes low-lying ridges, rocky outcrops, woodlands and undulating sandplains, some permanent waterholes and winding ephemeral watercourses. Alhalker is home to the many plants and animals that inspired Kngwarray’s artworks. Alhalker is the place where Kngwarray was born, and where she lived during her younger years. The name refers to a particular place, but also to a broader geographic area for which certain Anmatyerr people have custodial rights and responsibilities. This thread of inheritance has continued through countless generations.

Alhalker Suite: In later years, Kngwarray broadened the colour spectrum and techniques she used In her paintings: The most ambitlous work from his era is The Alhalker Suite, made up of 22 panels. This painting is a multi-faceted, kaleidoscopic portrait of Alhalker Country. It offers an aerial perspective of the winding waterways, sandplains and the variable geography of Alhalker. Kngwarray’s descendants have described how the colours capture seasonal changes and shifting light over a timeless land.
It was lovely to return to the @thecollegeofpsychi It was lovely to return to the @thecollegeofpsychicstudies - catch up with Gill Matini and the team and to see their fantastic new exhibition The Medium is the Message 🔮✨Go See✨🔮 beautifully curated by @jacqui_mcintosh 

It was also a special day because Anita and Kari Fagerholm from @aleksandraionowa Society were visiting from Finland. There is a room devoted to Aleksandra’s exquisite drawings in the show. 

The College’s art collection is utterly captivating and even though I know it so well I quickly ran out of time, especially as I wanted to spend time with some of the exhibition’s loans such as the room for Paulina Peavy @paulinapeavyofficial which is her first showing in the UK and @susanmacwilliam who has a film about parapsychologist Eileen Garrett. 

Fortunately, the show is on until January 31st so plenty of time for a return visit. 

Images
Anna Howitt Watts
@drawnbyann Ann Churchill 
Aleksandra Ionowa
#ithellcolquhoun 
@chantalpowell 
@nicole_frobusch 
@thesarahsparkes 
@seance_book Shannon Taggart
Sidney Manley
Paulina Peavy - (2 images)
PIC Charles Higgins
@mimei_t Mimei Thompson
@caramacwilliam_art
Ethel Annie Weir
A Madgestic week and still pinching myself that it A Madgestic week and still pinching myself that it wasn’t all a dream! Curating the stand with @gallevery for @friezemasters where the most amazing things happened. Definitely a week of radical spirits at play. 

@spiritnowlondon demonstrated their bold approach to acquiring new works by women for collections which this year was for the @nationalportraitgallery guided by @flavia_fffff - the first image shows the work they selected by Madge where the sitter of the portrait is a spiritual entity - surely that’s a first in the gallery’s history?

One British institution to invite Madge into the fold for the first time would be amazing, but the @tate also chose a work from the stand. This time a large calico titled Venus Mid Heaven - see images 3 and 4. There’s no doubt that a new portal has opened for Madge’s art. It was a joy to meet so many Tate people who were so excited about this acquisition. The general feeling was that it was long overdue. Massive credit to James Brett / Gallery of Everything team for materialising these historic moments. 

Five days at the fair and forty hours of talking non-stop Madge was a treat. Definitely on voice rest today, but excited for what lies ahead for Madge and the many other women who chose the unusual path of creating mediumistic and visionary art. 

Further images are from the stand - installed by Leana 🙏💪🔥 and her team 🙌🙌🙌 

I also want to mention the privilege of working alongside Sakhshi and Anna from the gallery with George Barker for the week. Phenomenal team. (There was a team photo taken, but not sure whose phone that was on.)

@madge.gill @mediumisticart
Ectoplasmix has materialised @gallevery in London Ectoplasmix has materialised @gallevery in London until November 30th. A group show depicting ectoplasmic presences in art and photography from the last 100 years. 

“In the 1920s, ectoplasm started to emerge from the creative digits of mediumistic art-makers. Notable cosmic flows appeared in the in glorious multi-coloured drawings of Frantisek Jaroslav Pecka, a Czech palaeontologist and spiritualist. His was an organic plasma oozing from every ghostly orifice and framing its subjects in psychedelic issuance.” 

“Ectoplasmix aims to bring such investigation to a head, and to decide whether this beautiful, esoteric and elusive form can bring historic resonance to a cynical today.”

#ectoplasm #artexhibition #mediumisticart #spiritphotography
I had the absolute joy of joining a tour of the ou I had the absolute joy of joining a tour of the outstanding Hoi Polloi exhibition now open at @thebrown_collection curated by @glennbrownofficial 

The occasion was all the more special as it was led the brilliant art educator and historian #LizziePerrotte, who was my first teacher twenty five years or so ago and the person who ignited my flame for art history that has burned brightly ever since. Thank you to all you art educators out there for inspiring so many - often without even realising it. 🙌

“Hoi polloi” is derived from the Greek for ‘the people’, or ‘the many, most often used as an insult for the great unwashed masses?
The exhibition brings together paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures from the sixteenth century to the present. At the heart of Hoi Polloi is the mark-energetic, precise or fractured. Across four floors, the exhibition traces how artists have used chalk, pencil, brush, pen, engraving tool or sculptor’s hand to conjure ‘the people, whether intimate or unsettling.”

Images
1- Glenn Brown - The Hoi Polloi 2024
2-3 #austinosmanspare self Portrait 1911
4 Glenn - Hot Love 2017
5 Glenn - drawing after Tiepolo 2025
6-7 #anyagallacio
8 Hans Bellmer 1955
9 Stanley William Hayter 1953
10-11 @drawnbyann 1974-75
12-13 Boris Petrovich Sveshnikov (details) 1987
14 Austin Osman Spare (detail) 1912
15 Glenn Sonnet Lover 2024-25
16-17 Anne French
Great solo #Toyen show Dreaming in the Margins @ri Great solo #Toyen show Dreaming in the Margins @richardsaltoungallery highlighting her graphic work. 

Followed by a few favourites from the British Art Fair @britishartfair 
@seanjeffersonart with @messumslondon 
#TristiamHillier - Holy Ghost
#Eileen Agar Invisible Messages  @theredferngallery 
#AlanDavie Shaman’s Wheel @alanwheatleyart 
#AustinOsmanSpare Automatic Drawing @abbottandholder
Atmospheric beyond words. #rudolfsteiner #goethean Atmospheric beyond words. #rudolfsteiner #goetheanum at Dornach. #anthroposophy #goethe
Beppe Assenza (1905-1985) found great success as a Beppe Assenza (1905-1985) found great success as an artist in Italy. In the 1950s, his wife’s serious illness took him to a clinic in Arlesheim; after her death, he chose Dornach in Switzerland as his new home. Here, he began his work as a teacher at a painting school, which, thanks to his skills, attracted an ever-growing circle of artistically talented people.

To mark the 120th anniversary of his birth and 40th anniversary of his death the Trigon Foundation organised an exhibition of Assenza’s work, along with some of his students including Fabrizia Bevilacqua at the KunstSchauDepot in Dornach (not far from the Goetheanum) 

Throughout his life, Assenza intensively studied the character of colour, Goethe’s theory of colour, and Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophical explanations on the subject. From his experience of colour, he developed the forms in his paintings, which retain mystery and the ability to attract and inspire each viewer. 

#beppeassenza #anthroposophy
My second post about Ghosts – Visualising the Supe My second post about Ghosts - Visualising the Supernatural exhibition @kunstmuseumbasel curated by Eva Reifert focuses on mediumistic art.

“Within just a few decades, electric power spread virtually everywhere, bringing the telegraph, the telephone, sound recordings, and the radio-each a new medium of communication that harnessed invisible forces to operate across large distances. That is why the idea that human mediums might make contact with the spirit world seemed far from absurd in the age of technology.

Images: @georgianahoughton from @mediumisticart and @thecollegeofpsychicstudies @agatha_wojciechowsky from @zandercollectioncologne 
@madge.gill Marie Bouttier, Laure Pigeon and Augustin Lessge from #collectiondelartbrutlausanne 
Wilhelmine Assmann 
Marie Hofmann and Milly Canavero from @collectionofmediumisticart 
Fernand Desmoulin from Institut Metapsychique in Paris. 

They are joined by a wider constellation of stellar trans-historical artists creating a cornucopia of the celestial and otherworldly! 

Nicolai Abildgaard #WilhelmineAssmann
#WilliamBlake #AnnaBlume #CorinneMayBotz
#HeidiBucher #MillyCanavero #ThomasDemand #FernandDesmoulin
#NicoleEisenman #MaxErnst #KatharinaFritsch
#RyanGander @madge.gill  #MariaHofman @georgianahoughton @mike_kelley_foundation
Justinus Kerner
#PaulKlee #AugustinLesage #GlennLigon
@susanmacwilliam #GabrielvonMax #ReneMagritte #JohnEverettMillais
#MeretOppenheim @tonyoursler  @corneliaparkerartist #LaurePigeon @sigmar.polke #OdilonRedon #ThomasSchütte
#JamesTissot #Toyen #RosemarieTrockel #BerthaValerius @rachelwhitereadofficial #GillianWearing #ErwinWurm and many others
What a Triumph! 👻 ‘Ghosts: Visualising the Superna What a Triumph! 👻 ‘Ghosts: Visualising the Supernatural at @kunstmuseumbasel curated by Eva Reifert assisted by Jasper Warzecha and advised by Susan Owens and Andreas Fischer. Too much great art for one post so here’s the first. 

“Ghosts have been haunting humans everywhere, and since the dawn of time. Although many people could tell stories of personal encounters, most of us today come across ghosts primarily in books and movies, on the stage, or as Halloween costumes.

For the longest time, their existence was an unquestionable fact of life. Then religious doctrine and the faith in reason sought to banish them to the realm of the imagination. In nineteenth-century Europe and North America, the search for meaning in life combined with a novel scientific enthusiasm to propel attempts to track down ghosts, to communicate with them, to prove that they were real. Over the past two hundred and fifty years, art and culture have produced an inexhaustible supply of varying images of ghosts animated by the unsettling power and poetic potential of these apparitions.

What do ghosts have to say to us?
They confront us with what fills us as individuals or our societies with unease and refuses to fade into oblivion, what eludes our control and defies our understanding. Meanwhile, they reflect the emotional and spiritual life of an era racked by doubts and wrenching changes that also unleash enormous creative energies.”

Images
@georgianahoughton spirit photo by Frederick Hudson 1872 (1-2)
Florrie Cook with Sir William Crookes 1874
John Everett Millais 1895
Gabriel Max of Seeress of Prevorst in a Trance 1892
William Hope spirit photo
Staveley Bulford (7-8) @thecollegeofpsychicstudies 
James Tissot The Apparition 
Ryan Gander @ryanjgander sculpture 
Justinus Kerner
Magritte
Meret Oppenheim 
Cindy Ji Hye Kim
Rachel Whiteread @rachelwhitereadofficial Poltergeist 2020
Cornelia Parker @corneliaparkerartist PsychoBarn 2023
Toyen
For my last gallery visit in New York I was thrill For my last gallery visit in New York I was thrilled to find out that @cavinmorrisgallery had extended their fabulous show - THE REAL SURREAL PART III: HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN - I caught the last day and it was a real treat including some familiar artists from home - Cath and Nicole. Lovely to see their work among many other gems. 

“artists involved with our gallery who, independently of any art movement, non-personal agenda or canon have integrated art and especially the process of making art, into the very areas claimed by mainstream Surrealists, who intellectually sought to achieve in their own work automatic writing and drawing, the immediacy of madness, the juxtapositions of diverse materials in unexpected conformations, dreams, psychic phenomena, occult magic, and spiritualism in its varied usages.”

Images are from:
Anonymous (Czech Republic)
Dagmar Havlíčková
Olga Karlíková
Shneider Léon Hilaire
Nicole Frobusch @nicole_frobusch 
Catherine Garrigue @cath_garrigue 
Anna Zemánková 

I was also lucky to have a preview of some of @francessmokowski blissful drawings that go on show tomorrow for her first solo show at the gallery. It’s going to be a wonderful show. The last image is the cover of her new book that has just been published.
Hilma af Klint – What stands behind the flowers ex Hilma af Klint - What stands behind the flowers exhibition @themuseumofmodernart 

I was so pleased to be able to catch this beautiful and subtle show of Hilma’s deep connection to nature - another layer to Hilma who is a gift that just keeps giving. 

For this post I just wanted to concentrate on her abstracted watercolours - the last series of artworks in the show.

“Though still engaged in careful observation, she abandoned exacting descriptions of leaves and petals and precisely rendered diagrams. Instead, she embraced the fluid possibilities of watercolor to capture what she observed and envisioned in the natural world. Evanescent washes express the plants’ aura, sensation, force, and spirit.

Af Klint’s wet-on-wet technique-flooding her paper with color-was influenced by observational exercises developed by anthroposophy’s founder, Rudolf Steiner.
In order to gain awareness “of all that is invisible in ordinary life,” Steiner instructed:
“Let the student place before himself the small seed of a plant, and while contemplating this insignificant object, form with intensity the right kind of thoughts. ... This force will create new powers of perception. The grain of seed will appear as if enveloped in a small luminous cloud. ... It will be felt as a kind of flame.”

I think these words resonated with me as I will be staying at the Goetheanum in Dornach next week and very much looking forward to wandering around the grounds with Hilma’s images in my mind. 

#hilmaafklint @hilmaafklintofficial #anthroposophy #nature #plants #flowers 

Images - Oak, Marigold, Seed’s Aura, Fern, Mallow, Pansy, Ash and Ear of Grain.
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