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.
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
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.