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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, mediumistic and visionary art.
vivienneroberts.com
@madge.gill @georgianahoughton

@friezemasters Some favourites 1-2 Stanton Macdo @friezemasters Some favourites 

1-2 Stanton Macdonald-Wright Gestation 1963 and Conception Life Cycle: tinted sketch for Synchromy in Blue Violet 1914 Schoelkopf @schoelkopfgallery 

3-4 Manina Untitled 1950s and Medusa Spirituale, 1971 Richard Saltoun Gallery @richardsaltoungallery 

5 Ethel Schwabacher c. 1948 Berry Campbell @berrycampbell 

6 Olga Fröbe Kapteyn The Annunciation c.1928 Charles Ede Gallery @charles_ede 

7 Simeon Solomon The Angel of Light 1885 Agnews @agnewslondon 

8 Gerda Wegener La Guerre est Morte 1917 Agnews

9 Evelyn de Morgan Study of a Woman c.1878 Agnews

10-12Anna Zemánková Untitled 1965-75 Gallery of Everything @gallevery
Anna Zemánková (1908 – 1986) at Frieze Masters wit Anna Zemánková (1908 - 1986) at Frieze Masters with The Gallery of Everything. @gallevery @friezemasters 

The bespoke installation, curated exclusively for Spotlight at Frieze Masters 2026, features a series of works originally exhibited in the central pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013).

Working from the early hours of the morning, Zemánková drew, shaded and stitched a cosmic landscape into being: strange organic forms, seemingly influenced by regional decorative art, floral Czech spiritualism and the aesthetics of science fiction.

Zemánková’s compositions were neither botanical studies nor abstract inventions. Her visionary language seemed to occupy a singular territory between observation and imagination, combining the precision of scientific illustration with the freedom of automatic drawing.

The current exhibition at Frieze Masters aims to honour the breadth, vision and complexity of Zemánková's once-private activities, and her emergence as one of the most remarkable artistic discoveries of the 20th century. For details and sales, please contact the gallery.
💫New Book Alert💫 Light From The North: Aleksandra 💫New Book Alert💫 Light From The North:
Aleksandra Ionowa, Mediumistic and Visionary Artist

Edited by Nina Kokkinen @ninakokkinen & Vivienne Roberts @mediumisticart A special thank you to Nina for being the best co-editor anyone could wish for 🥂

Available for preorder now @strangeattractorpress in both deluxe paperback and a special edition hardback. Thank you Mark and Jamie 🙏🙏

Aleksandra Ionowa’s (1899–1980) story offers a fascinating window into the history of esotericism and mediumistic and visionary art in Finland.

Ionowa’s life as an artist began under the guidance of the spirit world in July 1946 and, over the following decades, she created thousands of works that captivated a wide audience. Her distinctive visual language offered glimpses of a spiritual reality beyond the material world, inviting viewers to encounter forms and ideas that transcended cultural, religious and artistic boundaries. Conveying what many perceived as a deep and timeless wisdom, Ionowa’s art has enduring, universal appeal.

Light From The North presents the first English language survey of her incandescent art.

Contributors include Dr. Nina Kokkinen, Vivienne Roberts, Tiina Tiilikainen, Dr. Nuppu Koivisto-Kaasik, Dr. Manon Hedenborg White, and Elina Vuorimies.

Special thank you to Johanna
Havimäki and Strange Attractor who are responsible for the stunning design of the book. 

Paperback / Hardback
£30.00 / £40.00

💫Save the date💫 Book launch event at The College of Psychic Studies in London on 4th December. 

Thank you to Anita and Kari Fagerholm and the lonowa Foundation @aleksandraionowa for all their invaluable support in getting this book published. Also to The College of Psychic Studies @thecollegeofpsychicstudies and Visionary Women network @visionarywomen.art for offering images.
Ethelwynne M. Quail: The Kingdom of the Gods A wo Ethelwynne M. Quail: The Kingdom of the Gods

A wonderful new and must see exhibition has just opened @thecollegeofpsychicstudies in London curated by @jacqui_mcintosh and @simoncgrant

“Ethelwynne M. Quail (1903-1947) was a South African artist and sculptor associated with the Theosophical movement. Working across sculpture, drawing, painting and writing, she dedicated her life’s work to exploring realities beyond ordinary perception. Entirely self-taught, she developed a distinctive visual language inspired by nature, mythology and esoteric philosophy, seeking to make visible the forces she believed shaped the natural world.

This exhibition is the first public presentation devoted to Quail’s original paintings and drawings. At its centre are her depictions of devas: luminous non-human intelligences associated in Theosophical thought with the living energies of nature. Developed through her collaboration with the clairvoyant and writer Geoffrey Hodson (1886-1983) during the 1930s and later published in his book The Kingdom of the Gods, these works reveal Quail’s distinctive artistic vision, demonstrating how she transformed esoteric ideas into an original visual language of her own.

While Quail’s sculptures were exhibited in Britain during the 1920s, including at the Royal Academy and the Walker Art Gallery, her paintings and drawings have remained largely unseen. Bringing together more than twenty paintings and drawings alongside archival materials, photographs and personal correspondence, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to encounter Quail’s work in depth, inviting a reconsideration of her place within the history of twentieth-century esoteric art.

#theosophy
Tuning In: Paola Bay @paolamcbay Paola Bay makes Tuning In: Paola Bay @paolamcbay 

Paola Bay makes paintings, drawings and talismans built from a geometric vocabulary that arrives unbidden: interlocking triangles and diamond forms, spirals, sigils, and a script that is hers alone and belongs to no existing alphabet. The work is not derived from any tradition, though it holds long conversations with several, including Sumerian and Babylonian seals, ziggurat geometry, and the Flower of Life. Her talismans are made on natural stone in gold, an element forged in the collision of dying stars: matter that arrived here from elsewhere, marked with a language received the same way.

Working meditatively, Paola sets sacred geometry, symbolic keys and codes into each piece, so that what is held there is perceived differently by every viewer. The techniques are drawn from traditions that have long carried the sacred: Islamic illumination, sacred calligraphy, Japanese sumi-e, Persian miniature, and the Paubha mandala painting of Nepal. She layers her media upon carefully prepared wooden blocks and paper boards, including pencil, paint, gold and silver leaf, gofun, natural pigments and ink. The paintings work as a kind of technology. Their colour opens doorways — into presence, past the edge of the physical, and toward the essence of ourselves and the natural world.

“My artworks are a process that allows me to access healing dimensions. While I create them, my soul dances and sings to the rhythm of unconditional love. I entrust myself completely to the energies of the Universe as they flow through me, and they bring the guidance I need in that moment to shift my physical and spiritual bodies. Each calligraphy is governed by a different light language, a spiritual activator. The sacred geometries are aspects of the universal matrix our souls belong to. Every work is blessed with its own mantra, a way of diving deeper into its frequencies.”

#greatwomenartists #channelling #sacredgeometry
Tuning In: Cecilia Charlton @ceciliacharlton Ceci Tuning In: Cecilia Charlton @ceciliacharlton

Cecilia Charlton works primarily with the processes of weaving, embroidery, spinning, and natural dyeing. The artist utilises historically-grounded textile techniques to pursue interests in geometry, colour and the role of the subconscious.

Themes of feminism, human history, time and transcendence are inherently part of the hand-made work, and Charlton’s investigation into the history of textiles from creative, cultural, and socio-economic perspectives underpins her studio practice. Spanning the mediums of textiles, installation, and art in the social sphere, the work results in conversation tending towards both the personal and the universal. Charlton is currently a PhD researcher at the Glasgow School of Art and recent works meditate on the intersection of traditional craft practices, ecological systems, and sociopolitical events towards a deeper understanding of intercultural and environmental relationships.

“The works included in the exhibition are created through the processes of embroidery and weaving. I engage with both processes collaboratively, working within the constraints of a motif’s framework to intuitively arrive at the final composition. Both weaving and embroidery are acts which allow the practitioner to release a sense of control over the work, inviting the artist to behave as a conduit, enabling rather than forcing an artwork to take shape. The tactility of textile mediums, and the inherent rhythm in both of these processes furthers these themes. I embrace the repetitive nature of the processes and reflect this interest in pattern through the geometric aesthetic of the works.”

#textileartist #greatwomenartists #fiberart
Tuning In: Amy Grantham @_amygrantham “In music, Tuning In: Amy Grantham @_amygrantham

“In music, a ‘motif’ is a short musical idea. It contains elements of harmony and rhythm which represent some of the components that make up the overall composition from which it sprang. I began making my motifs in the fall of 2023. These pieces are not motifs in any literal sense of the word, but they did feel to me as if they were connected to my larger works on paper which I refer to as my ‘transcriptions of sound.’ Small parts of a larger whole which stand and sound beautifully all on their own.”

Exhibited for the first time, Grantham’s pastel Motifs demonstrate the artist’s long-standing exploration of form, colour and music. While not strictly synaesthetic, her compositions evoke a vivid intersection of sound and image, where music transforms into line, shape, and hue.

“I feel we have much to learn from colour. Chagall once noted: All colours are the friends of their neighbours and the lovers of their opposites! Colour teaches us about the importance of both harmony and dissonance, and how darkness makes the light shine more brightly.” Black and blue are important colours for Grantham. Black because it is supportive of all colours around it and forms an anchor that  is both a beginning and an end, and blue, which the artist describes as “especially beautiful”  because its depths plunge deep into darkness, but its heights burst through into light. “It encompasses every emotion and therefore feels essential in a larger vision of harmony.”

In Tuning In, Grantham’s chromatic works open a space between sound and sight, perception and interpretation, where the invisible can be seen through its sensory resonance.

#pastelart #visionaryart #greatwomenartists
Tuning In is a show about the visualisation of the Tuning In is a show about the visualisation of the immaterial but also emphasises how the artists push the boundaries of the materiality of their media whether wool, cotton, acrylic, pastel, gouache, gold, silver, stone, wood and more. Their alchemical artistry is an absolute joy to see and feel. Brava @ceciliacharlton @_amygrantham and @paolamcbay 

Here’s some of the fine details. 

#pastelart #textileartist #paintings #sacredgeometry #sacredfeminine
Tuning In exhibition part 2 – view of the lower gr Tuning In exhibition part 2 - view of the lower ground rooms

An invitation to tune in! Come and experience the swirling energies of two floors of the most beautiful and inspiring art by 

@paolamcbay @ceciliacharlton @_amygrantham
Tuning In exhibition view of the ground floor It Tuning In exhibition view of the ground floor 

It feels just right that this show opened at the same time as the Autumn Equinox - an invitation to tune in to the artworks and feel a renewed energy when stepping back out into the metropolis of Soho.

Amy Grantham @_amygrantham 
Paola Bay @paolamcbay 
Cecilia Charlton @ceciliacharlton 

We’re open until Sunday 17.30 and I will be here everyday.

GPS Gallery
36 Great Pulteney Street
Soho, London, W1F 9NS
One week to go!!! ✨ Tuning In: Vibrations, Freque One week to go!!! ✨

Tuning In: Vibrations, Frequencies and Harmonies

This exhibition brings together Paola Bay, Cecilia Charlton and Amy Grantham, three contemporary artists whose work explores vibrations, frequencies, energies and connections that exist beyond the immediately visible, occupying the space between the material and immaterial, the earthly and the otherworldly.

Through painting, drawing and weaving, the artists respond to the physical and metaphysical qualities of the world around us. Geometry, sound, colour, a deep understanding of the materials they use and intuition become ways of sensing what cannot always be seen or explained.

From cosmic rhythms and energetic patterns to the inner life of matter, Tuning In invites you to consider, through the work of these three phenomenal artists, other ways of experiencing the world.

Come and tune in!

📍 GPS Gallery @gpsgallerysoho 
36 Great Pulteney Street, Soho, London W1F 9NS

📅 22–27 September 2026

✨ Preview: Tuesday 22 September, 6–8pm

🕚 Open 23–27 September, 11am–5.30pm

🎟 Free admission

Paola Bay @paolamcbay 
Cecilia Charlton @ceciliacharlton 
Amy Grantham @_amygrantham 

Curated by Vivienne Roberts @mediumisticart

#VisionaryArt #ContemporaryArt #WomenArtists #soholondon #artexhibitions 

Images:
Amy Grantham courtesy of the artist
Detail of Amy’s Motif 7
Paola Bay courtesy of the artist
Detail of Paola’s Your Crystal Core Connection to the Universe 
Cecilia Charlton photo by Andy Fallon, courtesy of the artist
Detail of Cecilia’s Energy Field (maroon)
💫SAVE THE DATE 💫New Exhibition💫 Tuning In: Vibrat 💫SAVE THE DATE 💫New Exhibition💫

Tuning In: Vibrations, Frequencies and Harmonies 

Paola Bay @paolamcbay 
Cecilia Charlton @ceciliacharlton 
Amy Grantham @_amygrantham 

An exhibition of art that connects to the Universe.

22 - 27 September 2026

GPS Gallery @gpsgallerysoho 
36 Great Pulteney Street
Soho, London, W1F 9NS

Preview 22 September 6-8pm (All welcome)
23 - 27 September 11am to 17.30pm 

Curated by Vivienne Roberts @mediumisticart - More details to follow soon
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