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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 enigmatic art.
Next curation: Madge Gill at Frieze Masters
@madge.gill @georgianahoughton
Based in London

A great day out in Hastings to see the Olga Fröbe A great day out in Hastings to see the Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn exhibition @tadhgmaepro 

It’s on until October 12th Friday-Saturday
12.30-4pm so plenty of time to catch sight of these wonderful meditation plates. 51 George Street. 

“We are thrilled to present a very rare British exhibition of Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn’s original 1930s screenprints. The Dutch spiritualist, mystic radical. thinker and associate of Carl Jung founded the Eranos forum, a ‘meeting place between East and West’. Subsequently, she created the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism, a wildly diverse archive of archetypes and symbols that dove into the entirety of cultural history, a “magic wand of analogy.”

Produced between 1927 and 1934, these abstract geometric paintings were influenced by English Theosophist Alice Bailey, who believed that art was a useful tool in psychotherapy. Olga’s work fuses an art deco sensibility with cryptic symbolism, in a strict palette of deep blues, reds and gold-leaf. Fröbe-Kapteyn described them as ‘meditation paintings’, rich with mysticism seen through a futuristic lens, and even today her work feels fiercely modern. Part of the tranche of women artists ignored by the establishment, Olga’s work is gradually becoming recognised by scholars and the art world. She featured in The Centre Pompidou’s 2021 exhibition “Women in Abstraction” and in 2023,
“Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn: Deep Knowledge” was presented at Kunsthalle Mainz in Germany. Most recently, a retrospective, “Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn: Artista-Ricercatrice”
was held at the Museo Casa Rusca, Locarno, Switzerland.”

#olgafröbekapteyn #eranos #ascona #hastings #meditation
It’s a wrap! Tranceducers has ended, but will fo It’s a wrap! Tranceducers has ended, but will forever be a great memory. Also, the intention is out that it will tour to other parts of Britain🤞so hopefully it will return. If you have any suggestions do let me know. 

Thank you to everyone who visited and for your humbling compliments, the sharing of knowledge about the artworks and the insightful conversations that they inspired. There was also a lot of fun - especially with the 3D glasses. Thank you also to everyone who posted and helped spread word of the show - that meant a lot. Thank you to @wardsisterward for writing a review. 

Thank you to the artists who took part for your trust and support 🙌
@_amygrantham @kate_southworth @caramacwilliam_art @alano_o2o @melissaalley.artist @mistertoad1 @greghumphriesart @suewilliamsacourt #NnenaKalu @actionspace @aleksandraionowa @marianne.mccarthy #ettybuzyn #victorbramley #ithellcolquhoun @madge.gill @georgianahoughton 

Thank you🙏🙏🙏🙏 to my family for your support and encouragement @esmeealden 🙏 for taking this photo and Toby Ealden - who I still can’t believe managed to hang all 72 artworks in one day. 

What a great journey this is proving to be and one that is just getting started. More shows are in the planning stages for next year so watch this space. 🔮🎨

#visionaryart #mediumisticart #automaticwriting #automaticpainting #spiritart
LAST CHANCE to catch Tranceducers: Art of Visionar LAST CHANCE to catch Tranceducers: Art of Visionaries, Mediums and Automatists which includes work by the amazing Ithell Colquhoun with some fascinating original archive material. Exhibition ends today 10th August. 36 Great Pulteney Street Soho, London. 

In the late 1930s #ithellcolquhoun was part of the Surrealist milieu and witnessed first hand the automatic techniques used by artists Roberto Matta and Gordon Onslow Ford. It sparked a life-long interest in Colquhoun, inspiring her to develop a personal psycho-morphological practice resulting in her theory of the “mantic stain.” Her techniques included decalcomania, frottage, collage, fumage, parsemage and other chance-based procedures which allowed her to bypass conscious control and access deeper psychic revelations. 

In her essays The Mantic Stain, 1949 and The Children of the Mantic Stain, 1951, Colquhoun explained that creating a spontaneous mark could lead to a deeper consciousness which could be developed pictorially with conscious control. For Colquhoun, these stains were not just aesthetic devices but tools of gnosis, aligning with esoteric principles of scrying, and inner vision.

Images 
Desert Menace by Ithell 1974

Archival material of Ithell Colquhoun was kindly on loan from a private collection. 

Photographs of Ithell demonstrating her techniques for BBC programme Eye of the Artist - Fantastic Art 1948

Original letter by Onslow Ford inviting Ithell to join the surrealists in the South of France in. 1939 in which saw some of the mantic stain techniques used. 

Handwritten ritual for the consecration of a pill for crying which was first performed at 8pm February 27th 1964 in the garden of her Stone Cross cottage, Penzance. 

Handwritten manuscript for her essay Children of the Mantic Stain 1950

Qabbalah Tree of Life Collage by Ithell 1968

#greatwomenartists #surrealism #occultism #magic #ritual #automaticdrawing #automatism #manticstain #collage #ecremage #parsemage #fumage #tranceducers #tate #womeninarthistory #surrealistwomen #esoteric #mediumisticart #psychic
Jacqueline Lenore Moran lived in St Ives within th Jacqueline Lenore Moran lived in St Ives within the milieu of well known artists, most notably Sven Berlin. For long periods Jacque suffered from ill health and spent many months in a sanatorium in Penzance for treatment of her breathing difficulties. After pioneering lung surgery she recovered and returned to St Ives where she met Victor Bramley in 1959. A year later they married and not long after moved to the quiet village of Nancledra where she spent the rest of her life.

Jacque and Victor became interested in esotericism in the late 1960s experimenting with ouija boards, divination and automatism. Jacque started with automatic writing, receiving messages and made a few drawings in 1970 of which two are exhibited in the Tranceducers show - the first time any of her work has been exhibited. 

Unlike Victor, Jacque didn’t pursue mark making as an avenue for her esotericism, instead preferring to record her visions which she said would transfer to Victor’s Mandala series by telepathic communication between them. It is recorded that Jacque intentionally dissuaded attendees of the private view of his Mandala show at the Orion Gallery in 1974 from purchasing his art because she believed it was imbued with their combined magical properties.

The couple separated in the late 1970s and over the years Jacque became more and more reclusive. In the 1990s she took up drawing once again which became a constant companion for the rest of her life. She also developed a new language system in order to communicate with another realm. Victor, who had remained a constant part of her life until they both died in 2014 would supply her with art materials, but didn’t see the extent of her drawing until after her death.

Many hundreds of these later drawings in boxes of notebooks have recently been donated by Victor’s second wife Bernadette Contrino to the Whitworth Gallery who care for the famous Musgrave-Kinley collection of outsider art.

#artbrut
So delighted to feature the work of artist and fri So delighted to feature the work of artist and friend Amy Grantham in this Tranceducers exhibition. Amy is well known for her jaw-dropping pastels -  check out  @_amygrantham to see these, as well as news for her upcoming solo show in NYC in September 🙌🙌🙌🙌

In this exhibition we feature another facet of Amy’s wide-ranging oeuvre which  includes pastels with collage elements, gouache on objects and boxes, monoprints in ink and charcoal drawings. Amy is also a fine art photographer whose work represented in the National Portrait Gallery in London.

“During lockdown in NYC, as our external lives became smaller I made a point to tap into and grow my internal world as much as possible to stay afloat through whatever it was that might come. I felt a pull towards making monotypes, and so I began with a smearing of black paint on a piece of glass I had lying around in my studio. I pressed a piece of paper onto the glass, removed it slowly, and was met with various splotches of paint on the paper which I then began to fill in as images came to mind around them. Through random bits of paint a universe opened itself up to me and I captured the visions as they appeared, never questioning, only accepting.”

Image: Monoprint 2020 ink on paper (details)

#greatwomenartists #tranceducers #monoprint #decalcomania #visionaryart #arttoinspire #amygrantham
Cecilie Marková came from a family of Slovak glas Cecilie Marková came from a family of Slovak glassmakers who had settled in the glassmaking region of Kyjov. Cecilie was born there on 20th September 1911 with her three siblings. After secondary school she trained as a seamstress and milliner in Kyjov. In 1933, at the age of 22 Cecilie married a Spiritualist called Bohumil Marek. Together they attended seances which led her to experiment with automatic drawing, an act which left her astonished, but fascinated.

Cecilie created thousands of drawings and paintings with the help of an unknown ‘Master’ guiding her hand. The first took place on October 12th 1938, and the last near the end of her life in 1998. Throughout her lifetime she generously gave her work away.

On the 3rd May 1961 Henriette Zephir felt a presence next to her. She heard a soft melodious voice asking her to cooperate with it. Under the influence of this guiding force, whom she knew as Don Carlos, she began to draw. At first it was nothing more than scribbles, but with an unstinting effort by Henriette her work developed into drawings of flowing energies imbued with positivity and vitality. It changed her life and for the next half a century she would devote herself to esoteric practice.

Both women, although separated geographically, were very much united in their mediumistic drawing practice that offered them a way to deal with loneliness.

#mediumisticart #greatwomenartists
Featured in the Tranceducers exhibition is Aleksan Featured in the Tranceducers exhibition is Aleksandra Ionowa (1899-1980)

Ionowa’s creativity developed suddenly in July 1946 when she was 47 years old. Although, her spiritual path had begun much earlier when she met Theosophist Selma Mäkelä in 1926. The two became lifelong companions, immersing themselves in esoteric study and spiritual disciplines. Influenced by a broad spectrum of philosophical and spiritual movements including Theosophy, Anthroposophy, Rosicrucianism, and Freemasonry. 

Originally in Finland Ionowa was thought of as a singular mystic artist, but now it is accepted that in the broader historical context, she was part of an international, largely female movement of spiritually inspired art. Her refusal to call herself a medium doesn’t diminish the connections, but highlights the debate within spiritual traditions over the artist’s role in channelling and communicating with unseen realities. She represents a rare integration of deep study, lived spirituality, and creative output. In a time of political tension, technological upheaval, and social change, Ionowa quietly cultivated a space for beauty, contemplation, and cosmic connection. Her art remains a testament to an inner world just as vivid, and perhaps more enduring, than the material one.

@aleksandraionowa @visionarywomen.art
Victor Bramley (1933-2014) was born in Yorkshire a Victor Bramley (1933-2014) was born in Yorkshire and moved to St Ives in 1959 to pursue his love of nature, adventure and art. He became immersed in the artistic milieu there and gained recognition for his seascapes and still life paintings. 

What wasn’t so well known was that in the late 1960s he took up yoga and meditation which sparked a radical change in his art.

He began to paint mandalas and experiment with automatic techniques whilst studying divinatory studies such as astrological charts, runes and I Ching. His work came to the notice of curator and gallerist, John Halkes who showed Victor’s Mandalas in 1974 around the same time as he was showing the esoteric work of #ithellcolquhoun . 

Many of these early Mandalas can be seen in the Tranceducers shown along with other series of works he produced from 1967-87.

Victor said: “I drew designs in the garden on a sunny afternoon - as I worked a bee landed briefly on both pages stopping only to extend its proboscis. I carried on working and then it occurred to me  to ask why it landed here. If you follow the arrow to the landing point - the reason becomes obvious. So does a striking pattern attract the bee even without the incentive of colour and scent? Surely the spirit is drawn to the mandala in much the same way - hoping for nectar from the flower. The bee of course doesn’t know that -  as it collects its food it pollinates the flower which will then bear fruit for others to eat and fertilise the plant to produce more of its kind. I wonder what unknown fruits are brought forth or what hidden growth is nourished when a spirit comes to dwell on a mandala? July 1974

#visionaryart #kundalini #yoga #mandala
Introducing Louise Janin (1893-1997) During the e Introducing Louise Janin (1893-1997)

During the early 1950s Janin developed an art form which was a variation of the marbling techniques often seen in the end boards of books. She had first seen the technique in 1925 during a visit to a decorative arts exhibition in Paris. For Janin, the adoption of the technique led to years of experimentation with the overt materiality of the art making becoming imbued with the ideas of the cosmos. Janin called them her “cosmogrammes”.

A selection of these enigmatic jewels are available for sale from the Tranceducers exhibition until August 10th

@gpsgallerysoho 
#tranceducers #cosmic #cosmicenergy
Welcome to Tranceducers, Art of Visionaries, Mediu Welcome to Tranceducers, Art of Visionaries, Mediums and Automatists. 

This exhibition explores artistic practices shaped by alternative perceptions, otherworldly transmissions and intuitive mark-making.

Come and be mesmerised! 

Open until Sunday 10th August at @gpsgallerysoho 36 Great Pulteney Street, Soho, London. 

Curated by Vivienne Roberts @mediumisticart 

#victorbramley #jacquemoran #visionaries #mediumisticart @melissaalley.artist #EttyBuzyn #ithellcolquhoun @madge.gill @_amygrantham @georgianahoughton #AnnaHowittWatts @greghumphriesart @aleksandraionowa #LouiseJanin #NnenaKalu #josefkotzian @caramacwilliam_art #ceciliemarkova @marianne.mccarthy @alano_o2o @mistertoad1 #gracepailthorpe #františekjaroslavpecka @kate_southworth @suewilliamsacourt #henriettezephir
Welcome to Tranceducers, Art of Visionaries, Mediu Welcome to Tranceducers, Art of Visionaries, Mediums and Automatists. 

This exhibition explores artistic practices shaped by alternative perceptions, otherworldly transmissions and intuitive mark-making.

Come and be mesmerised! 

Open until Sunday 10th August at @gpsgallerysoho 36 Great Pulteney Street, Soho, London. 

Curated by Vivienne Roberts @mediumisticart 

#victorbramley #jacquemoran #visionaries #mediumisticart @melissaalley.artist #EttyBuzyn #ithellcolquhoun @madge.gill @_amygrantham @georgianahoughton #AnnaHowittWatts @greghumphriesart @aleksandraionowa #LouiseJanin #NnenaKalu #josefkotzian @caramacwilliam_art #ceciliemarkova @marianne.mccarthy @alano_o2o @mistertoad1 #gracepailthorpe #františekjaroslavpecka @kate_southworth @suewilliamsacourt #henriettezephir
Tranceducers- Art of Visionaries, Mediums and Auto Tranceducers- Art of Visionaries, Mediums and Automatists is officially open!!!

Heartfelt thanks to everyone that came to the private view and for your amazing compliments. For those that couldn’t make it you were missed. And for those in other realms your energies were very much present. 

The show is on to August 10th so come and say hello. 

Installation photos courtesy of @theycallme_gt
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