The Unnatural History of Cornwall – curated by Dr. Amy Hale brings stories of the weird and wonderful from Cornwall to a wider audience, with an emphasis on Cornish voices from the past and the present.
Speaker: Tony ‘Doc’ Shiels arrived in St Ives, Cornwall in 1958, a hopeful and ambitious young artist. For a few years his painting career went well, but he grew impatient with the limitations of abstract art. Instead, emboldened by Dada and Surrealism, his life became stranger and more magical. He displayed the disembodied head of an Egyptian princess, sawed a woman in half, and carried out some bizarre monster-raising stunts involving Morgawr the Cornish sea serpent. He included his wife, children and friends in many of these exploits and, indeed, after appearing in the national media, in the mid-1970s they became briefly known across Britain as ‘The weirdest family in the land’.
Curator: Dr. Amy Hale is an Atlanta-based anthropologist and folklorist writing about esoteric history, art, culture, women and Cornwall in various combinations. Her biography of Ithell Colquhoun, Genius of the Fern Loved Gully, is available from Strange Attractor Press, and she is also the editor of the forthcoming collection Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses from Palgrave Macmillan. Other writings can be found at her Medium site https://medium.com/@amyhale93 and her website www.amyhale.me.
Lilith – From Demon to Feminist Icon
The talk follows Lilith’s trajectory from her origins as an evil entity in Jewish folklore and demonology, to being a feminist icon today. We get to meet the Pre-Raphaelite poets, romantic painters, and lesbian Luciferians who all helped shape the image of her. We delve into the work of 19th-century occultists like Eliphas Lévi and Madame Blavatsky. We encounter the early feminists who saw a kindred spirit in rebellious Lilith. We examine her role in present-day political activism, Jewish feminist theology, Satanism and esoteric groups. Drawing on this multitude of voices, the talk also discusses broader mechanisms of counter-reading, mythical reinvention, and cultural subversion.
Per Faxneld is Associate Professor in History of Religions at Södertörn University (Stockholm), author of “Satanic Feminism Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in Nineteenth Century Culture” and a devotee of weird antiques, ominous music, and sinister sartorialism. He is the author of three monographs, two edited volumes, and numerous articles on Satanism, occultism, and esoteric art. In 2020, Faxneld made his literary debut with “Offerträdet” (“The Tree of Sacrifice”), an illustrated collection of folk horror tales set in 19th-century northern Sweden.
Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012) was an American artist and writer, chiefly known for diminutive surrealist paintings and a clutch of soft sculptures. However, the reach of this centenarian was far more expansive than many viewers and readers may be aware for she also worked on one novella, Abyss or Chasm, for her entire career, as well as poetry and printmaking. Tanning’s prophetic visual and literary imagery, such as the recurrent child-woman, Destina, were often drawn from her childhood reading lists, pre-empting and reflecting surrealism’s literary heritage.
Bio
Dr Catriona McAra is Assistant Director, Heritage Collections and Curation at the University of St Andrews. She is a specialist in modern and contemporary art history with particular interests in feminist-surrealist legacies. She is the author of A Surrealist Stratigraphy of Dorothea Tanning’s Chasm (Routledge 2017), and her forthcoming books include Ilana Halperin: Felt Events (MIT and Strange Attractor, 2022) and The Medium of Leonora Carrington (Manchester University Press, 2022).
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“The sombre richness of Benney’s aesthetic is at its strongest throughout what he terms his ‘Night Paintings’, a perhaps deliberate reference to the ‘Night Piece’ prints by Rembrandt whose dark tonal burr likewise captures an intimate sense of nocturnal mystery and magic. Rembrandt is an obvious point of comparison to Benney, whether in their mutual skill and worldly success as portraitists or in their compensatory lure towards the shadow and the very dark itself.”
Adrian Dannat
Paul Benney has worked as an artist and musician in both the U.S. and U.K. and is represented in public collections world wide including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The National Gallery of Australia, The National Portrait Gallery, The Royal Collection, The Eli Broad Foundation, AIG Houston, and Standard Life. A member of the Neo-Expressionist group of the early 80’s in New York’s East Village, Benney became known for his depictions of stygian themes and dark nights of the soul. Also one of the country’s leading portrait artists, he has painted many prominent cultural and political figures from Mick Jagger to The Queen
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