I work on what Anselm Kiefer has referred to as the “reintegration of fragments” or “bringing together what has come apart.” I reveal images which are very strong, which offer a glimpse of past worlds and indistinct realities, where the boundaries between fiction and documentary blur, and memories take on a life of their own.
‘My background in site-specific art installation instilled in me a deep understanding of the power of place and its hidden narratives. This foundation directly informs my current work, where I continue to explore the tangible world – real things, true stories – seeking not just the factual, but the surprising, even mystical elements embedded within them. Just as those installations transformed physical locations, I now aim to transmute lived experience and documented events into something unexpected and transcendent, revealing the extraordinary within the ordinary.’
My artist website is www.artsite.org.uk
Calling the River: the 72 Angels of the Shem HaMephorash
The Thames is a silver thread that flows through the city, uniting it as one and dividing it in two: the north bank and the south, the docks east of London Bridge and the grand palaces to the bridge’s west. It is a conduit for travel, not only physical travel from the source to the sea and beyond.
I plotted a series of imagined journeys made along the river by some of London’s most enigmatic and fascinating magicians: Doctor John Dee, embarking at Blackwall in 1583 on the first stage of his voyage to the mystical court of the Alchemist emperor Rudolf II in Prague; Aleister Crowley, taking ship in 1904 for Cairo where he would – allegedly – receive the wisdom of the ancients that was the foundation of Thelemic practice; and a few years later, the great Goddess-diviner Dion Fortune, priestess of Isis, walking the Thames in the moonlight.
To commemorate each of these voyages I have created sets of images that include rune casting and sigils* – cryptic spells that encode some kind of call or summoning, and which must be quickly dispersed or erased, by water, air, earth or fire.
I walked the Thames beaches in low tide and gathered stones. I painted runes on the stones and returned to the beach to cast the runes, leaving them on the foreshore to one day return to the sea.
The 72 Angels of the Shem HaMephorash are a set of angelic entities found in the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah, each linked with a specific divine name and function. Each Shem HaMephorash angel is believed to embody unique qualities and divine virtues, such as guidance, protection, healing, wisdom, spiritual growth, and more. Since the 16thC, the 72 Angels have played a significant role in Western esotericism, particularly in mystical, magical, and ritual Hermetic and ceremonial traditions. Ceremonial magicians have long invoked these angels for spiritual protection, healing, and moral guidance. The angels are often summoned through prayers, ritualized names, or talismanic practices, and through systems connecting them to zodiac degrees and Tarot cards, so each angel rules a 5° sector of the zodiac and relates to spiritual, emotional, or intellectual influences, sometimes corresponding to Minor Arcana Tarot cards.
Performance: I drew the Angels’ sigils in the sand then walked over them until they vanished. I drew sigils on paper and set fire to them on the foreshore the smoke rising into the air and dissipating. I scribed sigils from the Goetia onto black paper, then tried to burn them. But they would not burn! Instead, they kept floating away, and I could not recapture them! Up into the air they flew, and into the river.
Exhibited as digital slide shows on 3 screens.