Amy Hale's Magic in Contemporary Art - Museum of Witchcraft and Magic

Amy Hale’s Magic in Contemporary Art

A Series of Talks hosted by

Treadwells London

From the Venice Biennale to the world’s most prestigious galleries and museums, over the past 15 years we have witnessed an explosion of interest in magical and esoteric art. The international and growing interest in artists such as Hilma af Klint, Emma Kunz, Leonora Carrington and Ithell Colquhoun has changed the way in which the story of modern art is being told. However, there is also a fluorescence of magically inspired art emerging from contemporary artists such as Hilma’s Ghost, Barry William Hale, and Tai Shani, who are finding new audiences for powerful, visionary works, that are in turn shaping how we think about magic.

This ten-part series on magic in contemporary art hosted by Dr. Amy Hale will explore the history and key themes of esoteric and magical art, taking us on a journey through the recent cultural and creative fascination with all things numinous, liminal, and otherworldly. Through engaging discussions with curators, artists and scholars we will look at how art history is being rewritten, and how magical art today is changing the way we encounter the world.

Amy Hale is an Atlanta based writer and critic with a PhD in Folklore and Mythology from UCLA. Her research interests include contemporary magical practice and history, art, culture, women and Cornwall. She has written widely on artist and occultist Ithell Colquhoun, and has been an academic advisor to the 2025 Colquhoun retrospective at Tate St. Ives and Tate Britain. She wrote the first scholarly biography of Colquhoun, Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully (Strange Attractor, 2020) followed by the collection Sex Magic: Diagrams of Love, (Tate Publishing, 2024), and A Walking Flame: Selected Magical Essays of Ithell Colquhoun (Strange Attractor forthcoming 2025). She is also the editor of the groundbreaking collection Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses (Palgrave 2022). She has written extensively on magic and contemporary art, and has written for Tate, Burlington Contemporary, Art UK, The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Correspondences Journal and other institutions. She is an Honorary Research Fellow with Falmouth University in Cornwall, a trustee of the UK Charity Rediscovering Art by Women (RAW) and a member of the British Art Network. Beyond the Supernatural: Magic in Contemporary Art is due to be published with Tate Publishing in 2026.

upcoming:

Episode 7: October 12

Artificial Intelligence’s role in Magical Artistic Practice,

With Heather Freeman + Zach Blas

BOOK HERE

The use of artificial intelligence in artistic practice is a controversial and complex topic. In this episode, Amy chats with Heather Freeman and Zach Blas, both of whom work with artificial intelligence in various formats as both subject and collaborator.

They discuss how artists conceive of the use of artificial intelligence as part of a magical artistic practice, and how AI itself can be understood as a separate spectral presence.

Zach Blas (b. Point Pleasant, West Virginia, USA) is an artist, filmmaker, and writer whose practice spans moving image, computation, theory, performance, and science fiction. Blas has exhibited, lectured, and held screenings at venues internationally, including the de Young Museum, Tate Modern, Walker Art Center, 2018 Gwangju Biennale, the 68th Berlin International Film Festival, Matadero Madrid, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Art in General, Gasworks, Van Abbemuseum, Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, e-flux, Whitechapel Gallery, ZKM Center for Art and Media, and Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo. His practice has been supported by a Creative Capital award in Emerging Fields, the Arts Council England, Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst, and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.

As well as being an artist, magician, technologist, and podcaster, Heather D. Freeman is Professor of Digital Media in the Department of Art & Art History, UNC Charlotte. She heads The Center for the Study of Ideas and Practices, a multidisciplinary hub dedicated to the scholarly exploration of magic, esoteric, and religious traditions and knowledge systems across global and historical contexts. Drawing inspiration from established centers such as the Centre for Magic and Esotericism at the University of Exeter, the Occult Humanities Conference at New York University, CASE-E, RENSEP, Societas Magica, and similar centers, graduate programs, and scholarly research groups, this Center serves to share and advocate for faculty, staff, and student research in magic, esotericism, occulture, religious, and spiritual practices from many disciplinary perspectives. She holds a BA in Fine Art and German Studies from Oberlin College (1997), an MFA in Studio Art from Rutgers University (2000), and has taught at UNC Charlotte since 2006. Previously, Freeman worked as an art director, graphic designer, editor, and animator in New York and New Jersey. She has also taught art, graphic design, and visual rhetoric since 2001 at Allegheny College, The University of Kentucky, and Clemson University. Also @magicuspodcast and @familiarshapes the documentary.

previous webcasts:

Episode 1: March 30

Shaping the Context

for Magic in Art Today

with Jamie Sutcliffe

BOOK HERE

Why is it that magical, occult and esoteric art seem to be having a moment? In this episode Amy and curator and writer Jamie Sutcliffe, editor of Documents of Contemporary Art: Magic will explore the changing cultural conversations around both magic and art that are coming together to inspire this compelling zeitgeist.

Jamie Sutcliffe is a writer, curator, and co-director of Strange Attractor Press. His work explores artistic encounters with science fictive fabulation, the politics of video games, animation and its entanglements with developments in the life sciences, and the persistence of myth in digital contexts. He is the editor of the books Documents of Contemporary Art: Magic, published by The Whitechapel Gallery and The MIT Press (2021), and Weeb Theory (2023) published by Banner Repeater. His essays, reviews, and interviews have been published internationally by Art Monthly, Art Review, e-flux Criticism, Frieze, The White Review, Rhizome, The Quietus, and Bricks From The Kiln amongst others.

Episode 2: April 13

The Rediscovery of Magic

in Modern Art

with Susan Arbeth

BOOK HERE

In this episode Amy’s guest will be the pioneering art historian Susan Aberth, whose groundbreaking study of surrealist Leonora Carrington helped shape the way in which magic, witchcraft and the occult are framed in the study of modern art. Amy and Susan will discuss how art history has responded to a greater understanding of the impact of occultism, spiritualism and magic on artistic practices, and how the story of modern art is changing.

Susan L. Arbeth is the Edith C. Blum Professor of the Art History and Visual Culture Program at Bard College, and a world-renowned expert on occult art and surrealism. Her 2004 book, Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art (Lund Humphries) helped introduce Carrington’s magical work to the masses. She also recently co-authored The Tarot of Leonora Carrington (Fulgur Press, 2020) with Mexican curator Tere Arcq, which is an analysis of Carrington’s tarot paintings and original major arcana deck. Susan has also contributed to Surrealism and Magic, Guggenheim Venice (2021); Not Without My Ghosts (2020, Traveling exhibition in England); Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist (Phoenix Art Museum, 2019), Juanita Guccione: Otherwhere (Napa Valley Museum, 2019), Surrealism, Occultism and Politics: In Search of the Marvelous (Routledge Press, 2018), Leonora Carrington: Cuentos Magicos (Museo de Arte Moderno & INBA, Mexico City, 2018), Unpacking: The Marciano Collection (Delmonico Books, Prestel, 2017), and Leonora Carrington and the International Avant-Garde (Manchester University Press, 2017)

Episode 3: May 11

POSTPONED until July 6

Magical Ecofeminist Art of the 1980s

with Judith Noble + Christine Binnie

BOOK HERE

So much of today’s magical and esoterically inspired art is deeply indebted to the feminist and ecofeminist artists of the 1980s, inspired by Goddess imagery and addressing concerns about environmental destruction, war, nuclear proliferation and social justice in their artistic practice. In episode 3 Amy sits down with artist and art historian Judith Noble and one of the founders of the Neo Naturists, Christine Binney to reflect on feminist art of the 1980s, its context and importantly its legacy for magical art today.

Judith Noble is Professor of Film and the Occult at Arts University Plymouth (UK), and an artist for whom the practice of magic is central to the work. She began her career as an artist filmmaker, exhibiting work internationally and working for over twenty years in the film industry, before returning to academic research and art practice. Her current research centres on artists’ moving image, surrealism, the occult, and work by women artists. She has published on filmmakers including Maya Deren, Derek Jarman and Kenneth Anger. Her continuing practice as an artist includes text+image, artist’s books and mixed media/ textile pieces created through trance work, spirit possession and interaction with the more than human.

Christine Binnie studied pottery at Eastbourne Art College in the 1970s. In the early 80s she, along with Jennifer Binnie and Wilma Johnson, founded the Neo Naturists performance art group. They painted bodies to create performances, challenging narratives of the time. Since 2005 she has been decorating bodies of pots and humans, documenting her performances, life, wonderings and wanderings, connecting pots and people, exploring the magic within the mundane.

Episode 4: June 15

Reframing Contemporary

Hermetic Art

with Barry William Hale

+ Jesse Bransford

BOOK HERE

Some of the most arresting esoterically inclined modern artists such as Hilma af Klint, Olga Frobe Kapteyn, Austin Osman Spare, and Ithell Colquhoun were deeply driven by Hermetic philosophies and symbols, engaging with magical systems such as the Kabbalah, alchemy, and Rosicrucianism, inspired by the principle “As Above, So Below”. Barry William Hale and Jesse Bransford both work with Hermetic systems and principles in their artistic practice, but with very different styles and flavors. In episode four Amy chats with Barry and Jesse to discuss the role of various Hermetic systems and magical practice in their art.

Jesse Bransford is a New York-based artist whose work is exhibited internationally at venues including The Carnegie Museum of Art, the UCLA Hammer Museum, PS 1 Contemporary Art Center and the CCA Wattis Museum among others. He holds degrees from the New School for Social Research (BA), Parsons School of Design (BFA) and Columbia University (MFA). A professor of art at New York University, Bransford’s work has been involved with belief and the visual systems it creates since the 1990s. Work has been presented in books from Fulgur Press, “A Book of Staves (Galdrastafabók),” and most recently “The Fourth and Fifth Pyramids.” He lectures widely on his work and the topics surrounding his work. He is the co-organizer of the biennial Occult Humanities Conference.

Barry William Hale’s practice revolves around his deep and ongoing engagement with esoteric and occult practice and research. As such he uses a variety of media, including performance, video, sound, VR, painting and paper-based, depending on the demands of the work. A graduate of SCA and the Sydney punk squatter scene, Hale has become the preeminent occult artist of his generation globally. His work has been shown at Equinox Festival London (2009), Adelaide Fringe Festival (2011), 17th Australian Art Biennale Sydney (2010), Dark MOFO (2018), Raymond Buckland’s infamous Museum of Witchcraft and Magic Cleveland (2019-2020), and multiple exhibitions with Stephen Romano New York from 2015. He was also included in NYU’s prescient Language of the Birds (2016) and the Australian show Windows to the Sacred (2013) at S E Erwin Sydney and Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery. His books include the monograph Codex 231 (2014) and Legion 49 (2009) a deconstructivist take on the medieval grimoire. Hale lives and works in Melbourne, Australia.

Episode 5: July 20

New Contexts for Alchemical Art

with Chantal Powell + Mary MacGregor Reid

BOOK HERE

In this episode Amy Hale chats with artists Chantal Powell and Mary MacGregor Reid about their spiritual and artistic practice and the very different ways in which both artists use alchemical imagery. We will discuss what draws them to alchemical themes and how they feel that the inspiration of spiritual alchemy is relevant to our lives and journeys today.

Chantal Powell is a British artist and educator whose practice is deeply informed by Jungian psychology, alchemical symbolism, and her personal exploration of the unconscious. With a PhD in psychology, she follows a Jungian art-based research approach, using artistic process to engage with archetypal material and the psyche. She works across various mediums, including ceramics, glass, textiles, metal and painting. She engages with the embodied and vegetal aspects of alchemy, rejecting mind-body dualisms and promoting a regenerative model rooted in nature and transformation.
Chantal has exhibited at galleries and institutions across the UK and internationally and has her first solo institutional exhibition next year at the Levinsky Gallery, Plymouth. She is the founder of Hogchester Arts residency program, host of The Red Book Club, and a faculty lecturer at JungAcademy. She offers talks on archetypal symbolism and psychological alchemy, and has co-curated exhibitions focusing on archetypally symbolic art.

Mary MacGregor-Reid is a multidisciplinary artist living in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her interest in Western Esotericism and human experience of the otherworldly is expressed through moving image, photography and sculpture. Within ceremonial ritual the assumption of archetypal characters merges with movement, gesture, and language, forming a symbolic lexicon for the esoteric practitioner. Mary reimagines this visual language – in particular the occulted symbology of alchemy – within her work and is deeply engaged in the tactile creation of both costumes and objects as an intrinsic part of the process.

Episode 6: August 3

Queer Magics and Witchcrafts of Resistance

with Edgar Fabián Frías + Elijah Burgher + Hilma’s Ghost

BOOK HERE

In this episode Amy Hale chats with Edgar Fabián Frías, Elijah Burgher and Hilma’s Ghost about the ways in which queer magical art practices and worldviews have the potential to inspire different ways of seeing and knowing. We will talk about the role of queer magical ancestors and forgotten histories, queer utopias, and how magical art and resistance can inspire healing and action.

Edgar Fabián Frías is a multidisciplinary artist, psychotherapist, educator, curator, and brujx based in Los Angeles. With a passion for breaking boundaries and creating new forms of knowledge, Frías blends diverse artistic disciplines to produce thought-provoking and immersive works of art that transcend conventional categories. Their oeuvre encompasses installation, photography, video art, sound, sculpture, printed textiles, GIFs, ritual, performance, social practice, and community organizing, reflecting their commitment to experimentation and innovation.

Frías’ work explores themes of resistance, resiliency, and radical imagination in the face of colonization, environmental racism, and other contemporary issues. Drawing on Indigenous Futurism, spirituality, play, pedagogy, animism, witchcraft, and queer aesthetics, Frías offers a unique perspective on the complexities of modern society. Through their art, they bridge the gap between the traditional and the contemporary and create spaces for contemplation and transformation.

As a nonbinary, Wixárika, and Latinx artist whose family hails from Mexico, Frías brings a rich and diverse background to their practices. They hold dual BA degrees in Psychology and Studio Art from UC, Riverside, and an MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling with a focus on Interpersonal Neurobiology and Somatic Psychotherapy from Portland State University. In 2022, they completed an MFA in Art Practice at UC Berkeley. They are currently working as Special Faculty in Performance at CalArts.

Elijah Burgher is an artist and occasional writer currently based in Berlin, whose work focuses on mythology, sexuality and subculture. He was featured in Block Party at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, Pennsylvania (2023); Scrivere Desegnando at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Geneva (2020), Queer Abstraction at the Des Moines Art Center (2019), For Opacity at the Drawing Center in New York City (2018), and the 2014 Whitney Biennial, among others. He is the co-author of Sperm Cult with Richard Hawkins, published by Bad Dimension Press in 2017. Burgher received a MFA from the School of the Art Institute, Chicago and a BA from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY. He is represented by PPOW in New York, Western Exhibitions in Chicago and Ivan Gallery in Bucharest.

Hilma’s Ghost is a feminist artist collective co-founded by Brooklyn-based artists Sharmistha Ray (they/them) and Dannielle Tegeder (she/her). The collective acts as a restorative project that uplifts the voices of women, trans, and nonbinary artists using abstraction and mysticism in their work and makes them visible. The collective makes art collaboratively using divinatory methods, runs programs and workshops with spiritualists for the community, and conducts research on women artists and spiritualist practices that they use in their projects and workshops.

Episode 7: October 12

Artificial Intelligence’s role in Magical Artistic Practice,

With Heather Freeman + Zach Blas

BOOK HERE

They discuss how artists conceive of the use of artificial intelligence as part of a magical artistic practice, and how AI itself can be understood as a separate spectral presence.