As someone who grew up next to the UK’s premiere witching village (Burley, New Forest), I’ve found the abundance of occultism in London’s art scene of late intriguing. Two paintings by Monica Sjöö – anarchist, ecofeminist and spiritual devotee of the Great Mother – are on display at Tate Britain’s ‘Women in Revolt!’ while her first UK solo show runs at Modern Art Oxford. Despite once earning herself a reputation as a ‘satanic ringleader’, Marina Abramović’s Royal Academy retrospective makes no secret of her obsession with shamanism, crystals and astrology. Mysticism and the occult in art seem to be inescapable right now – and I’m all here for it.
At the heart of occultism lies the witch, a subversive figure that incarnates the joys and pitfalls of womanhood. Once persecuted as sexual deviants who made deals with the devil, the witch has long been the site of projected patriarchal anxiety throughout history. Think of Anne Boleyn, for one, whose alleged crimes spanned from infidelity and incest to witchcraft and treason. Or Sybil Leek, Burley’s own resident witch, whose esoteric practices saw her so ostracised from her community that she fled to the US. These are the kinds of stories and folklore I devoured growing up.
In LAMB Gallery’s recent exhibition, ‘Surrealism and Witchcraft’, they come to life. Much like the witch herself, the exhibition’s choice to reclaim Surrealism as a conduit to the spiritual says a lot about the need to reframe and retell history through a feminine lens. A key focal point of the show was Leonora Carrington’s series of witch hats (c. 1955), found by friend and fellow Surrealist Leonor Fini shortly after Carrington’s death. Fini was commissioned to paint the series in 1952, enlisting Carrington as her collaborator before a proposed exhibition that never materialised. The gouaches stand as a testament to the artist’s shared creative vision, love of occultism and long-lasting friendship.
Elsewhere, Surrealists à la Paula Rego, Harriet Gillet, Sophie von Hellerman and Bea Bonafini paint the witch as abstracted, a universal figure that we may well find ourselves in. Halfway through the space, a crowd gathers at Georg Wilson’s The Gathering (2023). The colours are earthy and grounded; the brushstrokes textural and rounded. Nooka Shepard’s Wyrd Night (2023) bolsters a cosmic kind of whimsy – is that Lewis Carrol’s Alice and white rabbit I see? Are some of these women wearing mushroom hats? Tali Lennox’s Devotion (2023) conjures the Sacred Heart of Jesus, while Alma Berrow’s Free of strife (2023) offers a playful take on a tarot deck. There’s magic and witchcraft galore, in all its multifarious forms.
The first half of the 20th century saw a radical reappraisal of the links between mind and body, dreams and reality. In the vein of Freudian thought, French poet and writer André Breton conceived of his ‘pure psychic automatism’ in his Manifeste du surréalisme, an ode to non-conformity and aesthetic rebellion. It’s of little surprise that Surrealism went on to be dominated by men – but that’s what makes ‘Surrealism and Witchcraft’ all the more compelling.
Perhaps the draw of the witch today lies not in her omnipotence but in her iconoclasm, instead. But I also think something about the witch taps into a deeper, more collective desire. There’s a spirit of camaraderie here, a shared language between the pieces through the colours, the mood, the temperament of the paint and even the artists themselves. Macbeth taught us that witches never come alone, and nowhere in London does that feel more true than at LAMB. So long live the witch!
