Objections to an Empty Mind

Although an influential figure within the occult community and championed by experimental musicians and writers including Coil, Barry Humphries, Alan Moore, Genesis P-Orridge, Jimmy Page and John Zorn, the London artist Austin Osman Spare (1886 - 1956) still remains a liminal figure in British art history.

Trained at the Royal College of Art, Spare became a celebrity after exhibiting at the Royal Academy, aged 17, in 1904 and was hailed as an artistic genius early in his career. However, his occult leanings (he was briefly associated with notorious occultist Aleister Crowley) and unfashionable Symbolist tendencies made popular success difficult for the awkward, inward-looking Spare who became increasingly marginalised by the art establishment, before eventually dropping out of sight altogether. But, while Spare may have been down, he was not out, and continued to paint and draw at a prodigious rate, exhibiting his work in his flat or in South London pubs.

‘Objections to an Empty Mind’ brings together a small yet potent selection of works by Spare from several private collections, and is curated to bring to the fore his exquisite draughtsmanship (often likened to Albrecht Dürer), and highlighting his interests in occult traditions, psychical phenomena, eastern philosophy wireless broadcasting and his own idiosyncratic theories about the unconscious. Works include obsessively-detailed phantoms and grotesques; symbolist and astral landscapes; automatic drawings; hallucinatory pastels; a decorated radio set; examples of Spare's anamorphic portraits (his ‘experiments in relativity’), as well as more traditional, vivid portraits of local cockneys.

Shown alongside Spare's works will be Richard Brown’s ‘Electro-chemical Glass’, 1997, a time- based work using non-digital media comprising three disks of copper, aluminum and iron on a bed of liquid fertilizer, all encased in glass. Over fourteen years, through a series ongoing chemical interactions, the work is slowly unfolding and transforming, new shoots of iron and sheens of gold and lapis lazuli blue evoking ideas of alchemy, hyper-dimensionality and the magic of the real.

17 February - 17 March 2012 - Free Admission

Kindly supported by Arts Council England, Creative Scotland and Rexcorp

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	Objections to an Empty Mind Austin Osman Spare with Richard Brown 17 February – 17 March 2012 Although an influential figure within the occult community and championed by experimental musicians and writers including Coil, Barry Humphries, Alan Moore, Genesis P-Orridge, Jimmy Page and John Zorn, the London artist Austin Osman Spare (1886 - 1956) still remains a liminal figure in British art history. Trained at the Royal College of Art, Spare became a celebrity after exhibiting at the Royal Academy, aged 17, in 1904 and was hailed as an artistic genius early in his career. However, his occult leanings (he was briefly associated with notorious occultist Aleister Crowley) and unfashionable Symbolist tendencies made popular success difficult for the awkward, inward-looking Spare who became increasingly marginalised by the art establishment, before eventually dropping out of sight altogether. But, while Spare may have been down, he was not out, and continued to paint and draw at a prodigious rate, exhibiting his work in his flat or in South London pubs. ‘Objections to an Empty Mind’ brings together a small yet potent selection of works by Spare from several private collections, and is curated to bring to the fore his exquisite draughtsmanship (often likened to Albrecht Dürer), and highlighting his interests in occult traditions, psychical phenomena, eastern philosophy wireless broadcasting and his own idiosyncratic theories about the unconscious. Works include obsessively-detailed phantoms and grotesques; symbolist and astral landscapes; automatic drawings; hallucinatory pastels; a decorated radio set; examples of Spare's anamorphic portraits (his ‘experiments in relativity’), as well as more traditional, vivid portraits of local cockneys. Shown alongside Spare's works will be Richard Brown’s ‘Electro-chemical Glass’, 1997, a time- based work using non-digital media comprising three disks of copper, aluminum and iron on a bed of liquid fertilizer, all encased in glass. Over fourteen years, through a series ongoing chemical interactions, the work is slowly unfolding and transforming, new shoots of iron and sheens of gold and lapis lazuli blue evoking ideas of alchemy, hyper-dimensionality and the magic of the real. 17 February - 17 March 2012 - Free Admission Kindly supported by Arts Council England, Creative Scotland and Rexcorp home Press Release - AOS re-edit