MakeMore Arts

I’ve been approached by MakeMore Arts, a newly set up Arts Provider in Ryedale to work with them on forthcoming projects. This is an exciting collaboration and I’m very much looking forward to being part of the team.

EVENT - Badges for Sale

I've had some of my large portraits made into 38mm metal badges 😀

Curious Curiosities - International Cat Day

THE FAMILY – Candidate Posters

Voting day again and I have recently come across the posters from dads progressive candidacy days… I am fascinated by everything about these, from the print makers information to the feel of the paper, the quality of the print and the colour of the font. I can imagine them being churned off a huge machine.

WORKSHOP - Day of Clay

I'm really looking forward to running this clay bust making workshop (inspired by my Michael Gove busts) for York Art Gallery for their Day of Clay. It's a drop in workshop so feel free to pop along and get modelling.

 

 

EVENT – Porcelain Sandwich on display in Arts Council Reception, Leeds Offices

Ha ha… News has just reached me that one of my porcelain sandwiches is out on display in the reception of the Leeds HQ of the Arts Council offices, this apparently has moved with them from the Dewsbury office where it was also on display… The lovely chap there who took a photo of it for me in situ also said that it was a conversation piece 🙂 Very happy to hear about this little piece of news and amazingly it ties in with National Sandwich week it would appear!
Looks like it’s a an egg mayo one!

EXHIBITION – Big Draw Illustrations

I'm very proud of the exhibition which has just gone up in Scarborough Art Gallery. This is a selection of work produced by the children in the Big Draw workshops I ran at the end of last year. The exhibition is on until 14th May, so if you are in the area pop in and see some of the lovely, inspired illustrations drawn by a mix of Year 2 - Year 6 primary school children.

WORKSHOP - ARTS AWARD, Clay Bust Workshop

A lovely couple of days running a clay bust workshop as part of the Battersea Arts Centre, Scratch Fund. This was in conjunction with Scarborough Museums Trust and Arts Award. The clay bust workshop was hugely popular and there were some amazing little characters created over the two days. I’ll be running another clay bust workshop later in the year at York Art Gallery for their ‘Day of Clay’.

     

        

OUT & ABOUT - Angelic Reiki

Very enjoyable weekend in which I received this! Nicely timed as I am a year into my spiritual healing course (half way through) and was looking for another big push forward. Very much want to explore magnetic healing next (not to be mistaken for healing with magnets) but can't find any courses in the uk... will keep looking :-) 

INSPIRATION - Georginia Houghton, Spirit Drawings

I've just been doing some research of exhibitions put together by Psychic Artists and have come across this exhibition put on by the Courtauld Gallery last year, 16 June – 11 September 2016. I wish I'd seen it at advertised at the time as I would have loved to go down to London and have a look, it's had some brilliant press coverage with favourable reviews by the Guardian, Independent, the Times and Time Out.

★★★★★ “awe-inspiring visions of a Victorian medium”
The Guardian
★★★★★ “An absolute must-see”
Time Out
“A crucial show…the Courtauld is rewriting art history”
Sunday Times, Culture

Georgiana Houghton - Glory be to God

Georgiana Houghton (1814-1884) was a Spiritualist medium who, in the 1860s and 70s, produced an astonishing series of abstract watercolours. Detailed explanations on the back of the works declare that her hand was guided by various spirits, including several Renaissance artists, as well as higher angelic beings. In this exhibition The Courtauld Galley explores this astounding series of largely abstract Victorian watercolours and offers visitors a unique opportunity to view remarkable works which have not been shown in the UK for nearly 150 years.
Houghton was a prominent figure of the early spiritualist movement in Victorian England, which played a significant role in various spheres of nineteenth-century culture and was later championed by such influential figures as Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Spiritualism emerged as the belief that contact with a spirit realm was possible and that such communication could bring one closer to God. Houghton, a trained artist as well as a medium, pioneered the use of drawing as a method of channelling and expressing communications with spirit entities. During the 1860s and 1870s, she produced a series of unprecedented abstract watercolours as part of her practice as a spirit medium. Houghton called these works ‘spirit drawings’.

Houghton’s spirit drawings are remarkably complex and layered watercolours. Technically highly accomplished, their bold colours and fluid forms have a mesmerising and deeply absorbing effect. Detailed inscriptions on the back of the works declare that her hand was guided by various spirits, including family members, several Renaissance artists, such as Titian and Correggio and higher angelic beings. These inscriptions, which are a form of automatic writing, also make clear that Houghton’s richly patterned compositions are intended to be faithful visualisations of aspects of the spirit realm and designed to inspire and strengthen the spiritual life of their viewers. Although produced in a very different context, Houghton’s abstract works have close connections to the ways in which twentieth- century artists developed abstract languages of art to transcend the everyday realm of representation and consciousness.

In 1871 Houghton rented a prestigious gallery space in Bond Street and presented 155 of her spirit drawings to a perplexed London audience. The Critic from The Era newspaper pronounced it to be “The most astonishing exhibition in London at the present moment.” The Daily News likened the works to “tangled threads of coloured wool” and concluded that “They deserve to be seen as the most extraordinary and instructive example of artistic aberration.” The exhibition proved to be a commercial failure and nearly bankrupted Houghton. Although she continued to make spirit drawings after the exhibition, her ambition of popularising the practice was not realised. Today, less than fifty of her works are known.

There was also a one day symposium which I REALLY wish I had attended on the 7th September, I shall have to see if there have been notes taken and recorded somewhere from the session...
Join us for a one day symposium which brings together a range of artists, curators, art historians and historians of spiritualism to explore the connections between art, spiritualism and creativity in the nineteenth century to the present day.

Georgiana Houghton - The Eye of God