Black Mirror: Magic in Art explores the influences and roles of magic, enchantment and the occult in contemporary art and how they function as aesthetic, conceptual and political forces. Through a multi-disciplined curatorial approach of 2D, 3D, film, video and performance art, Black Mirror will showcase the work of fourteen internationally recognised artists.
Modernism was built in the late nineteenth century, we live within its legacy; the same period created the foundations of modern magic as it is practised and understood today. The magical and occult have been much marginalised within the scholarship of twentieth century art, seen in opposition to enlightenment and progressive values. This exhibition challenges this premise, taking fourteen artists whom draw on the magical to propose that enchantment and occult are intertwined with contemporary issues.
Covering a period over the last thirty years a magical aesthetic is intrinsic to an engagement with environmentalism; feminism; gender; post-digital; neo-liberalism and nationalism. Black Mirror is an exhibition where the magical, occult and enchanted are activated as progressive forces that question and direct the flux in this uncertain age.
exhibiting artists
Jesse Bransford
Siân Bowen
Lindsey Bull
Tom Butler
Willem de Bruijn
Tessa Farmer
Heywood and Condie
Jason Martin
Judith Noble
Paula Rego
Dominic Shepherd
Mark Titchner
Suzanne Treister
Marie von Heyl |