Presented by MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
MEDIA KIT
Believe not every spirit,
but try the spirits
21 April - 27 June 2015
Opening function: Wednesday 22 April 2015, 6-8pm
Guest curators: Lars Bang Larsen and Marco Pasi
Georgiana Houghton (UK), Yuri Ancarani (IT), Jan Bäcklund (DK),
Kathy Barry (NZ), Belle Bassin (AU), Vincent Ceraudo (FR), Mikala
Dwyer (AU), Max Ernst (DE), Madame Favre (FR), Chiara Fumai
(IT), Diena Georgetti (AU), Madge Gill (UK), Tamar Guimarães (BR)
& Kasper Akhøj (DK), Susan Hiller (US), Susan Jacobs (AU), Jess
Johnson (NZ), Kristine Kemp (DK), Joachim Koester (DK), David
Lamelas (ARG), Dane Mitchell (NZ), Matt Mullican (US), Olivia Plender
(UK), Lea Porsager (DK) Laurent Schmid (SU), Georgina Starr (UK)
and Dorothea Tanning (US)
The major group exhibition Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits takes
as its departure point the art of forgotten Victorian-era Spiritualist Georgiana
Houghton (1814-1884), and features contemporary and historical painting,
sculpture, video and photography that both explore and adopt Spiritualist
practices and methodologies.
Rarely seen outside a Spiritualist context since 1871, Houghton’s 25 abstract
watercolours from the Victorian Spiritualist Union collection were produced as
part of her Spiritualist practice, which saw Houghton use drawing as a way
to channel communication with spiritual entities. The works were brought to
Australia for an exhibition in 1910, during a period in which Spiritualism was
especially popular. The Victorian Spiritualist Union is the longest continuously
operating Spiritualist organisation in the world and counts amongst its many
distinguished patrons Australia’s second Prime Minister Alfred Deakin, who
was the organisation’s President before devoting himself to politics. Believe
not every spirit affords an opportunity to reflect on the influential role of the
Spiritualist movement in Australian history.
Charlotte Day, Director, MUMA comments, ‘A unique amalgamation of artist,
Spiritualist and medium, the fascinating and unexpected story of Houghton
has generated international interest from curators and writers who see her
work as representing an abandonment of figurative form that anticipates the
development of modern abstraction by artists such as Kandinsky or Malevich
by several decades.’
Marco Pasi, who has been researching the life and work of Houghton for
several years, was invited along with Lars Bang Larsen to curate the inaugural
exhibition of MUMA’s new biennial program collaborating with international
curators. Pasi adds of Houghton’s work, ‘In many respects nineteenthcentury Spiritualism has been a lost continent for a long time. Recent research
however has begun to show how important this movement has been from a
cultural and social point of view. Art is perhaps the one aspect of Spiritualism
that has attracted least attention from historians. Houghton’s watercolours
emerge from this lost continent as alien, impossible objects, which on the
one hand oblige us to rethink the relationship between artistic creativity and
alternative spirituality, and on the other open the door to new interpretations
in the history of modern art’.
At a time when few opportunities were present for women to explore
creative practices, Houghton’s work draws attention to the role of women
within society by creating an alternative space through ritual. The perceived
irrationality of Spiritualism has in the past been used as an excuse to
systematically belittle the importance of Houghton (and other female artists
such as Hilma af Klint) within a history of abstract art. Houghton’s strange
mediations between individual self and the collective otherworld foreground
a feminist investigation that complicates common tropes of hysteria and
feminine theological excess as dangerous or disturbed.
Ground Floor, Building F
Monash University, Caulfield Campus
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia
Houghton’s seemingly frenetic, yet highly deliberate, and beautiful
watercolours accept as legitimate that which lies beyond the bounds of
conventional experience, and offers a fascinating context for an array of
contemporary artists who are interested in the spaces between dream, after
life and living reality. Artists such as Joachim Koester, Matt Mullican and Jess
Johnson absorb both shared cultural and personal memories through the
aesthetic of ritual to interrogate notions of the world beyond.
Lars Bang Larsen adds, ‘The paranormal has always tapped into our
emotions, hopes and fears through its quasi-erotic heightening of the senses.
Since the turn of the millennium, artists—such as those in Believe not every
spirit—have increasingly turned to it to develop a critique of contemporary
experience. They explore marginalised Spiritualist practices and imaginaries,
utilising them to respond to an elusive global regime of continuous war,
religious fundamentalisms, invisible transmissions of information, and ghostly
operations of finance and control. Such an artistic approach emphasizes
Spiritualism’s historical defiance of institutionalized forms of art, religion and
politics. Then and now, it is a way of insisting on the necessity to imagine
and intuit otherness—other forms of being, aesthetic revolt by fragile means,
inhabiting ambiguous states.’
MEDIA
For all media enquiries please contact Kelly Fliedner
kelly.fliedner@monash.edu | +61 418 308 059
www.monash.edu.au/muma
Telephone +61 3 9905 4217
muma@monash.edu
Georgiana Houghton
The Portrait of the Lord Jesus Christ 1862
courtesy of the Victorian Spiritualist Union
Presented by MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
BELIEVE NOT EVERY SPIRIT, BUT TRY THE SPIRITS: MEDIA KIT
GUEST CURATORS
Lars Bang Larsen is an art historian, independent curator and writer
based in Copenhagen. He has curated projects at the Stedelijk Museum,
Amsterdam; Sala Rekalde, Bilbao; and Raven Row, London.
Marco Pasi is Associate Professor in History of Hermetic Philosophy and
related currents at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on the
complex web of relations between modern Western esotericism, religion,
politics and art.
PUBLIC PROGRAMS
Monday 20 April, 6.00-7.30pm
Boiler Room lecture at The Wheeler Centre with Matt Mullican
Tuesday 21 April, 12.30-1.30pm
MUMA floor talk with Kathy Barry and Dr Jan Bryant, Senior Lecturer MADA
Wenesday 22 April, 6pm
Opening celebration with performance by Matt Mullican
Wednesday 22 April, 12.30-1.30pm
Lunchtime Forum Lecture with Lars Bang Larsen and Marco Pasi
Venue: Monash University Caulfield, Lecture Theatre G1.04
Saturday 13 June, 2-3.30pm
Spectral Stories: A Melbourne Spiritualist’s carte-de-visite album
Dr Martyn Jolly, Head of Photography and Media Arts, Australian National
University
georgiana houghton
Born in the Canary Islands in 1814, Houghton spent most of her life in
London working as an artist and a Spiritualist medium. In her youth,
Houghton trained as a painter but she gave up in 1851 following the death
of her younger sister. In 1859, still in mourning for her sister, Houghton
became attracted to Spiritualism, and especially to the idea that the spirit
survives after the death of the body and can communicate with the living
through a human medium.
In 1861 Houghton became a drawing medium. First using pencils and then
switching to watercolours, she created automatic or spirit drawings. While
in a trance, her hand moved involuntarily, supposedly channelling ideas from
the dead and expressing them in visual forms. Her spirit guides were initially
other artists and later said to be high spirits such as archangels. Houghton
and other Spiritualists believed that these spirit guides provided the content
of the drawings, while Houghton herself was responsible for their style.
There are detailed explanations for each drawing on their reverse side.
These elaborate descriptions provide a key to the symbolism in the drawing,
clarifying the message of each work and naming the spirit who acted as
Houghton’s guide in the creative process. At MUMA, a unique display
system will be installed, allowing both sides of each watercolour to be on
view.
In 1871 Houghton self-funded an exhibition at the New British Gallery on Old
Bond Street, London. Although received well by the British Spiritualist clergy
and some artists, most contemporary audience members were baffled by
her dense symbolism and new abstract aesthetic. The exhibition was a
financial disaster, as Houghton only sold one of the 155 works on display.
However Houghton's work has survived and can usually be found (save,
the occasion of this exhibition) on the walls of the active Victorian Spiritualist
Union, located in Melbourne's CBD.
from top:
The Tenderness of the Lord 1862
The Tenderness of the Lord 1862
(reverse)
The Sheltering Wing of the Most
High 1862
The Sheltering Wing of the Most
High 1862 (reverse)
all images courtesy of the
Victorian Spiritualist Union
Presented by MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
BELIEVE NOT EVERY SPIRIT, BUT TRY THE SPIRITS: MEDIA KIT
Matt Mullican (USA)
For the opening celebration of Believe not every spirit, Matt Mullican will
give a performance while in a state of hypnosis. Since the 1970s Mullican
has been experimenting with hypnosis to create art that both examines his
subconscious, and functions as a strategy for breaking from the patterns
of everyday life. Working under these hypnotically induced intoxications
or psychoses, Mullican becomes his alter ego, what he refers to as that
person—an ageless, genderless being that inhabits his physical body. That
person’s reality is documented through a series of performances wherein he
draws, counts, and writes with ink on large sheets of easel paper.
Joachim koester (DK)
Joachim Koester uses as vehicles various events, characters and places
from the past, to build new subjective histories of magic, initiation rituals
and hallucinatory experiences. Of Spirits and Empty Spaces (2012) is a
16mm film about the American spiritualist and activist John Murray Spear
who, along with his congregates at the The Domain, a settlement within the
borders of rural New York and Pennsylvania in 1861, sought the designs for a
new sewing machine through trance and movement. At the time, Elias Howe,
American inventor and sewing machine pioneer had already developed a
sewing machine with several strong patents. Spear and his group intended
to circumnavigate Howe's legally protected designs in order to create a new
and cheaper machine that would be accessible to ordinary people.
Chiara Fumai (IT)
The performance practice of Italian artist Chiara Fumai belongs to a tradition
of female mediums—she sees herself as being 'spoken to' by different
controversial entities, which she then freely (mis)interprets and combines into
new stories to question their symbolic meaning and representation in the
mind of the viewer. Dealing with radical feminism, media culture, language
and repression, her starting point is performance, which later transforms into
.
installations, videos and collages.
Tamar Guimarães (BRZ) & Kasper AkhOj (DK)
ˇ
Tamar Guimarães and Kasper Akhøj's film entitled Captain Gervasio's Family
premiered at the 55th Venice Biennale's main exhibition, The Encyclopedic
Palace, in 2013. This black and white silent film is a portrait of a Spiritualist
community in Palmelo, Brazil, where half of the inhabitants are believed to
be psychic mediums. The Spiritualists of this small town practice what is
known as ‘the magnetic chain’, a legacy from the German physician Franz
Mesmer, the founder of Spiritualism Allan Kardec, and the French botanist
François Deleuze. The film focuses on a map drawn by a Spiritualist woman
which charts twenty astral cities hovering above Brazil that are supposed
to represent a more splendid vision of those found on earth—a utopia of
continuous progress and urbanisation.
ˇ
from top:
Matt Mullican Self-induced
hypnosis 2007
performance at TATE, London
courtesy of the artist
Joachim Koester Of Spirits and
Empty Spaces 2012
16mm film still
courtesy Galleri Nicolai Wallner
Chiara Fumai The Invisible
Woman 2012
drawing and collage courtesy
of the artist and Apalazzo
Gallery
Tamar Guimarães and Kasper
Akhøj Captain Gervasio's
Family 2013
16mm film converted to video
courtesy of the artists