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

mediumisticart

Curating, writing/researching, mediumistic and visionary art. New exhibition Louise Janin June2026
vivienneroberts.com
@madge.gill @georgianahoughton

The Echo of the Spirit Through the Rhythms of Life The Echo of the Spirit Through the Rhythms of Life - in detail! 

Show ends Sunday 7th June

Curated by  @simoncgrant @mediumisticart 

36 Great Pulteney Street @gpsgallerysoho
See you next week for the opening of The Echo of t See you next week for the opening of The Echo of the Spirit Through the Rhythms of Life - the first UK solo exhibition of Louise Janin (1893-1997)

Curated by Simon Grant @simoncgrant and Vivienne Roberts @mediumisticart 

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

Preview 2nd June 6-8pm

3 - 7th June 2026
10-6pm (Free Admission)

Image: Design by @studio.ardworks
Photography: Siyu Chen Lewis

#louisejanin
Madge Gill is in Tate Britain! @madge.gill @tate Madge Gill is in Tate Britain! @madge.gill @tate 

Untitled - Venus Mid Heaven - a beautiful ink on calico and a fine example of mediumistic art is now on permanent display in the room called Reality and Dreams (1920-40) along with the cream of British art including works by #IthellColquhoun #EilenAgar #Gracepailthorpe Winifred Nicholson and #Gluck.

Congratulations to @gallevery for making this happen through during their solo presentation of Madge at Frieze Masters @friezemasters last year and 🙏 to Tate for recognising Madge after so many decades.

I may be a day early but who better to reflect upon and celebrate for this years #MarkTheirMemory than the inspiration that is Madge Gill. 🎉
NEW! Hilma af Klint exhibition curated by Pascal R NEW! Hilma af Klint exhibition curated by Pascal Rousseau at the Grand Palais in Paris. Wonderful balance of the figurative and abstract, theosophy and Spiritualism, and contextual material. The show flowed and the lighting was sublime - every detail brought to life. 

 “Recently revealed as a pioneer of abstraction, the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) developed, in the early twentieth century, a fascinating body of work which has yet to be discovered in France. The exhibition presents her Paintings for the Temple (1906-1915), an important group of eleven series in which the artist recasts the line between visible and invisible, abstraction and figuration, through symbols, figures and geometric shapes. Inspired by Nordic folklore, natural science and esoterism, Hilma af Klint developed her visual vocabulary as part of The Five (De Fem) group of women, who produced “automatic drawings” during spiritist seances.
Driven by spirituality and freedom of expression, the work of Hilma af Klint continues to inspire new generations. More than a hundred canvases and drawings chart her spiritual journey, and at her request were not shown publicly until many years after her death.”

@hilmaafklintofficial 
@le_grand_palais 
@centrepompidou #expohilmaafklint
What an amazing micro-trip to Switzerland with @j_ What an amazing micro-trip to Switzerland with @j_lgallery and @roolutoo 

50 years 🎉 for @cablausanne with their new show:

Art Brut in Switzerland: From the Origins of the Collection to the Present is a celebration of The Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, now operating for half a century. The concept of Art Brut dates back to the mid-20th century, when Jean Dubuffet developed an avid interest in works produced outside the confines of conventional art circles. Dubuffet coined the term in the summer of 1945, refining the concept through his subsequent reflections and discoveries – first in Switzerland, and later in France and elsewhere. This show highlights the role that Switzerland played in the emergence of a new genre that challenged prevailing categories and definitions and helped draw attention to the work of self-taught creators. 

Images 1-3 Aloise Corbaz, Wolfli 
Remaining images - posters from some of the iconic exhibitions on mediumistic and visionary art over the last five decades.
Happy Birthday Georgiana Houghton born on April 20 Happy Birthday Georgiana Houghton born on April 20th, 1814. 

In 1871 she presented 155 of her spirit drawings in a solo show at the New British Gallery on Old Bond Street, London. She wrote the introduction on her birthday saying “I earnestly hope that some of the visitors to this gallery, who have leisure to devote themselves to it, will go home, and try to obtain this delightful gift, but they must bear in mind that extreme patience and perseverance are needed for all Spiritual work. In my own case, the drawing power would appear to have come with very great rapidity, but they must remember that I had already been a medium for upwards of a year and a half, after having steadily striven for it during these months. For the drawing phase I was also prepared by my own earthly training, having devoted the chief part of my life to that accomplishment.”

Georgiana sat nearly every day in the gallery wearing her day bonnet and posing as a visitor, but ready to explain to those interested in listening all about her enigmatic creations. Clergymen, artists and a microscopist showed the most interest. The critics were baffled. One said it was as if a lady’s wool basket had been tossed about with a toasting fork. Another remarked that a troop of fairies had dropped jewels across a canvas by Turner.
Looking forward to being in Cambridge this week an Looking forward to being in Cambridge this week and speaking about 19th century mediumistic art 

Art History Annual Conference @forarthistory 
Wednesday 8 – Friday 10 April 2026
University of Cambridge @cambridgeuniversity 

Materiality of the Unseen in the Long Nineteenth Century
Thursday 9th April at 10 am Moller Institute Study Centre

The nineteenth century has often been called the “frenzy of the visible” as new theories, technologies, and artistic practices attempted to visualize the previously unseen. Motivated by a greater interest in invisible, hidden, and out-of-reach phenomena such as the climate, the non-visual senses, areas of the globe or cosmos that were generally untraversable, or health-related subjects, artists and makers experimented with ways of visualising such topics
for both specialist and general audiences…

Session Convenors:
Rosalind Hayes, Durham University and Jennifer Marine, University of Virginia

Speakers:
Richard Taws, University College London
Epistolary Drift: Underwater Post and the Siege of Paris

Tairan An, ETH Zurich, Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture
Surface Contact: Robert Mallet’s Forensic Seismology

Sophie Lynch, University of Chicago
Through Glass, Darkly: The Photographic Resolution of Celestial Nebulae

Vivienne Roberts, Independent/Freelance
Felt Presences: Women, Art and Mediumship in Britain and America in the Nineteenth Century.
SAVE THE DATE! Louise Janin: The Echo of the Spir SAVE THE DATE! 
Louise Janin: The Echo of the Spirit through the Rhythms of Life
Curated by Simon Grant @simoncgrant and Vivienne Roberts @mediumisticart 

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

Preview 2nd June 6-8pm

3 - 7th June 2026
10-6pm (Free Admission)

Image: Design by @studio.ardworks
Art Photography: Siyu Chen Lewis
Credit for photograph of Louise Janin: Thérèse Bonney - University of California, Berkeley / BHVP / Roger-Viollet
Highlights from the @outsiderartfair @cavinmorri Highlights from the @outsiderartfair 

@cavinmorrisgallery @andrewedlingallery @galerielemetais @j_lgallery

@cath_garrigue @madge.gill #annazemánková #shinichisawada #AbrahamLincolnWalker
Tranceducers St Ives – Spirit and Soul Flowers: Ce Tranceducers St Ives - Spirit and Soul Flowers: Cecile Markova, Josef Kotzian, Madge Gill @madge.gill and Aleksandra Ionowa. @aleksandraionowa
It’s all in the detail! Tranceducers St Ives and i It’s all in the detail! Tranceducers St Ives and its myriad techniques and textures.

Details from the work of 
@_amygrantham 
Louise Janin
@melissaalley.artist 
Etty Buzyn
@alano_o2o 
@suewilliamsacourt 
@kate_southworth 
@greghumphriesart 
@marianne.mccarthy 
Cathy Ward @wardsisterward
Ernest James Gerrard was born in 1875 in Ince-in-M Ernest James Gerrard was born in 1875 in Ince-in-Makerfield (Lancashire) and died in 1963 in Appleton (a suburb of Warrington). He is buried in Warrington Cemetery.

Gerrard worked as an engineer/technician in the Lancashire steel industry and settled down in Lovely Lane, Warrington with his wife Mary Ann and daughter Enid. Family reports note that Ernest was a collector of antiques, a keen follower of the stock market and an accomplished linguist. He could read Latin, Greek and Arabic and taught himself French and German.

There are no reports why Gerrard became a spiritualist and a drawing medium, but his wife died in 1919 which coincided with the period in which his earliest works were created. Aside from the figurative and abstract forms, his art also shows evidence of unusual mirror writing and backwards script which he said was only possible under spirit control. A form of automatism not often found in mediumistic writing and drawing.

Ernest James Gerrard is a recent rediscovery after 32 of his artworks came up at auction in England in 2025. They found their way to Switzerland and under the guidance of Phillippe Eternod @gdmlausanne several have been placed in prominent collections throughout Europe.

Tranceducers St Ives is the first known exhibition of his works which have such incredible flow and luminosity. 

Images 

Armour, 1926

The Message of Grace, 1928 with poem on reverse

Untitled 1943
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