UNDERSTANDING THE RITUAL - shamanic ritual in art

THE PRACTICAL SENIOR TEACHER, a book made jointly by "our Phil" from arthur+martha and his sister Finella over the course of 25 years, has a rare public showing at exhibition UNDERSTANDING THE RITUAL.

UNDERSTANDING THE RITUAL / PRESS RELEASE 

EXHIBITION: THE STOREY GALLERY, LANCASTER 26 MAY-27 JUNE 

UNDERSTANDING THE RITUAL, at The Storey, is an exploration of shamanism in contemporary art, featuring the work of 13 practitioners, including Gaye Black (formerly Gaye Advert, of punk band The Adverts) and renowned poet Jerome Rothenberg. 

Artist/curator Pete Flowers is searching for deeper instinct in the rites of the artist: “UNDERSTANDING THE RITUAL challenges current ideas of process to show how much contemporary art is shot through with the more ancient spirit of shamanism. Western art in the 21st Century may appear to be surgically detached from spirituality - but is it actually part of the shamanic tradition?”

Kate Eggleston-Wirtz installing HENNY-PENNY

Collaged pages by Phil and Finella as museum fodder

A performer in a vulnerable white dress attempts to transfer black ink between bottles; a tapestry is stitched with fruit, wax, notes for “remembering a soul”; the head of a doll flowers into life; a hen pulls a Romany gypsy caravan; a drawing casts spells; a cabinet receives the blessings of the public… the exhibition sees a shamanic shape in these new ceremonies.

Sue Flowers hanging stitched works by Sally Payne

ARTISTS INCLUDE: Darren Andrews, Gaye Black, Kate Eggleston-Wirtz, Pete Flowers, Sue Flowers, Adam Gregory & Gillian Jane Lees, Geoff Parr, Jerome Rothenberg, Sumit Sarkar, Sally Slade Payne & The Gingerbread Tree (Finella & Philip Davenport).

FOR MORE INFORMATION contact Green Close www.greenclose.org

Telephone 015242 21233

UNDERSTANDING THE RITUAL - shamanic ritual in contemporary art

Exhibition open Tues-Fri 12-6pm at The Storey, Meeting House Lane, Lancaster,

LA1 1TH, Telephone: 01524 582394 Email: Lancastervic@lancaster.gov.uk

For those who can't get to Lancaster, The Gingerbread Tree have constructed a virtual MARGARET THATCHER MUSEUM of "ethnographic materials from the 1980s" as a YouTube playlist.

Sue and Pete Flowers hang ink-splashed white dresses, Constants & Variables, by Gillian Jane Lees and Adam Gregory