INSPIRATION - Aldous Harding, First Album

Looks like this is the chosen apocalypse album... I can't stop listening to it, and red vinyl too! 😍

 

INSPIRATION - Mustard Pot

I absolutely adore this! I happened upon it at a car boot sale and it cost the grand total of £1, I'm the very lucky new owner... yay

INSPIRATION - This Woman's Work

Help! I can't stop listening to this song....

INSPIRATION - Emma Kunz @ the Serpentine

A friend told me about this exhibition when I was in London and highly recommended that I visit, suggesting that it was completely up my street. Emma Kunz was a clairvoyant and spiritual healer who used a pendulum to create huge geographic drawings which she used to assist in her healing, referencing these drawings as ‘portals’…. Well, this is indeed right up my street! Completely! Having taken a 3 year hiatus from ceramics to pursue a healing and clairvoyant path myself, this exhibition spoke more profoundly to me than anything I have seen in some time. Without question there is something to these drawings. I could not tear myself away, I stayed at the serpentine for 3 hours, finding myself drawn into working in a healing capacity with these images, zooming between rooms in strange sequences seeking and seemingly knowing which drawing should follow the proceeding one (this I found all the more interesting as Emma Kunz never dated any of her drawings or provided any information, when asked to describe them she would say that they were “shape and form expressed as measurement, rhythm, symbol and transformation of figure and principle”). I found this to be the oddest experience I’ve had at an exhibition . My impulse and instinct to work with these drawings in a way unfamiliar to a gallery context felt strange. I was responding to this exhibition from the perspective of a healer more than an artist. I was magnetically drawn to certain intersections in the images, my hands hovering, my fingers drawing energy from various points. This was a very personal experience which felt at odds with the ever changing influx of vigilant invigilators, one of whom told me off for touching the glass.

These powerful artworks find me at a time when recent spiritual events have brought me into an unanticipated place. I needed to interact with these drawings, that this work exists I found breathtaking, even more so that the work is retrospective. Kudos to the Serpentine Gallery for bringing this artist to a modern day audience….and especially to me.

I loved the added touch with this exhibition of the creation of the stone benches, importing large chunks of the healing rock AION A that Emma Kunz discovered. The simple form of these benches summed up by co-curator Christodoulos Panayiotou, “I shall add only a series of benches for Emma Kunz. I see them as viewing devices. They shall allow vision rather than being seen”…. for this he referenced Paul Klee- “Didn’t Feuerbach say: For the understanding of a picture, a chair is needed? Why a chair? To prevent the legs, as they tire, from interfering with the mind”. As crystal is also an amplifier it will indeed help allow vision 🙂

                                     

OUT & ABOUT - Rachel Ara

I really love this self evaluating artwork by Rachel Ara, this is currently on display at the Whitechapel Gallery, I first met Rachael at the Aesthetica Symposium and what an inspirational artist she is 😀

Rachel Ara - This Much I'm Worth

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

INSPIRATION - Naked Trump

I'm loving these naked Trumps which have popped up in New York and a few other major US cities. 

The job of conceptualizing and creating the statues fell to a man who goes by the name “Ginger,” a Las Vegas-based artist. Ginger has said that he has a long history of designing monsters for haunted houses and horror movies. He spent up to 25 hours each week working on the statues since they were commissioned in April'. He used 300 pounds of clay and silicone to create the statues and said 'the candidate’s mouth ended up being his biggest sculpting challenge'

INSPIRATION - 80,000 Delft Tiles

Loving these Delft tiles in an Amsterdam tunnel... 80,000 in total - Wow! 

https://materia.nl/article/amsterdam-tunnel-lined-80000-delft-blue-tiles/

OUT AND ABOUT - Thackray Medical Museum

Had a lovely day trip to the Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds last week, what an incredible museum with a huge presence and collection... Amazing! The building is fascinating as it used to be an old workhouse, the scale of the building is really imposing and it was odd wondering around thinking about the past uses. The collection houses an amazing room full of ceramic apothecary jars known as the Wilson collection... I spent ages there looking at the smallest details on some of the jars, these were all produced between the 1500 - 1800s.

INSPIRATION - Meissen Dog

Meissen Manufactory (German, 1710–present) | Bolognese dog | ca. 1733

This amazing piece of ceramics was posted on facebook by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Wowsers! It's fab, I'm very inspired by this piece... looks like I'll be further researching 18th Century Meissen.

INSPIRATION - Vintage metal hen moulds

Vintage metal chocolate moulds.

A friend sent me a link to these chocolate moulds which are currently for sale on ETSY. I love them! They are so sinister and make a statement in their own right. They would be ideal for Farm World... little caged chickens. 

http://www.etsy.com/listing/90577602/vintage-metal-chocolate-mold-4-antique

INSPIRATION - Staffordshire Cow Head

Staffordshire pottery - Cheese plate & cover, 19th Century

What a beauty! I love this piece... I shall definitely be drawing some influence from it when I come to create my Staffordshire style cow for Farm World.

INSPIRATION - Womens Shoes ca. 1650

INSPIRATION - Wowsers... just come across this image, they conjure up all sorts of imaginings