Not Without My Ghosts: The Artist As Medium at Millennium Gallery, Sheffield

Maja Lorkowska, Exhibitions Editor
Ann Churchill, Blue Oval Drawing, 1975. Courtesy the artist. Image by David Bebber

Not Without My Ghosts: The Artist As Medium at Millennium Gallery, City Centre 31 March — 26 June 2022 Entrance is free — Book now

Shrouded in mystery and embracing the idea of the artist as a medium and communicator with forces beyond our realm is Millennium Gallery’s exhibition Not Without My Ghosts: The Artist as Medium.

Featuring the work of 26 international artists from the 19th century to the present day, the show delves into the ways that artists have engaged with spiritual practices and rituals such as séances, channelling and other paranormal research throughout the years.

Pia Lindman LBL 44 (Rocket), 2016 From the Nose, Ears, Eyes series Courtesy the artist
Vidya Gastaldon Healing Painting (désastre mauve), 2016. Photo © Claire Dorn. Courtesy of the Artists & Art Concept, Paris

 

The pieces range from intricate, careful ink drawings and giant animated owls, to textile sculpture featuring paintings on silk. Amongst the more decisive, refined pieces there is an in-between, unfinished quality to some of the works as if they were notes recording a process, caught in the middle of a séance and transcribing the artist’s experience in a hurry before the vision ends.

Displayed across two rooms with powder-pink walls, the Not Without My Ghosts has the cosy feeling of being mildly enveloped by the work, with the spectral pieces casting a spell on the viewers.

Highlights include Ann Churchil’s fantastical landscape painted on smaller pieces of paper and stitched together to create one enormous piece that can be examined for hours, filled with minuscule details and surprising additions hiding in every panel.

Installation view of Not Without My Ghost, The Artist as a Medium
Not Without My Ghosts, The Artist as Medium, installation view

 

A series of Madge Gill’s signature ink drawings is a delightful addition, with repeating lines and floral patterns so recognisable in the artist’s now well-known style.

A large oil painting by Augustin Lesage is similarly entrancing. Lesage was a coal miner who became a painter in his mid-30s, led by the belief that he could hear the voice of his little sister who had died at the age of three. Intricate and harmonious, the piece seems to depict architectural forms with repeating patterns and lines in subdued colours.

Many of the artists followed practices that have now come to be associated with Surrealism, like automatic writing. Susan Hiller’s scribbled, illegible text is displayed in an L-shaped frame alongside transcribed versions of the words. The pieces possess an otherworldly quality, with the transcriptions being a lot more unsettling than the original scrawled flow of words.

Pia Lindman, GL 28 (Naivete), 2016 From the Nose, Ears, Eyes series Courtesy the artist
Pia Lindman, GL 28 (Naivete), 2016, from the Nose, Ears, Eyes series. Courtesy the artist

 

The works in Not Without My Ghosts result from the process of translating otherworldly energies to expand the limits of human experience and perception, and ultimately, create art. The display features famous names like William Blake and Sigmar Polke, yet the sheer number of female artists’ work clearly highlights the role of women’s contributions to spirit art and investigation.

Whether or not you are a believer in the power of mediums and their ability to channel unknown forces, Not Without My Ghosts promises to broaden your perspective and perhaps even alter your ideas about all that may exist beyond our visible world and the artists’ role in opening it up to a larger audience.

Not Without My Ghosts: The Artist As Medium at Millennium Gallery, City Centre 31 March — 26 June 2022

Book Now

What's on: Exhibitions

Until
ExhibitionsManchester
Nothing About Us Without Us at PHM

‘Nothing About Us Without Us’ at PHM explores the history of disabled people’s activism and their ongoing fight for inclusion with a wonderful collection of exhibits brought together for the first time, 

free entry
Until
ExhibitionsNorth East
Chris Killip, retrospective at Baltic

This spring, Baltic welcomes a major retrospective of the work of Chris Killip, one of Britain’s most influential and prolific post-war documentary photographers whose tender gaze captured the lives of communities in the North East of England.

free entry
Until
ExhibitionsManchester
(Un)Defining Queer at The Whitworth

Through a fantastic collection of classical and contemporary artists’ work, ‘(Un)Defining Queer’ examines the use of language, histories and narratives to explore what ‘queer’ really means today. free entry

Culture Guides

Music

We go all in on festivals, with a round-up of everything from city-spanning giants to grassroots gems you may not know about.

Exhibitions

There's no rest for the art lover - this month brings outdoor sculpture, musings on water, political drawings and Liverpool Biennial 2023!

Classical Music

Summer's classical music calendar is filling up nicely! Read our top picks of concerts happening in Manchester and the North.

Winnie the Pooh at Manchester Opera House
Families

The sun has finally got his hat on! Enjoy our top picks of family-friendly events and activities, both indoors and outdoors.

Gerry Potter (credit Lee Baxter)
Literature

Books are big this summer, with festival readings, poetry slams, creative writing activities and famous faces all putting in an appearance.

Food and Drink

All signs point toward June being a scorcher of a month, so let’s take a look at all things summery food and drink.

Tours and Activities

From literary activities to brilliant independent shops, keep your minds and homes filled with the good stuff this month.

Theatre in Manchester
Theatre

Check out our updated guide for lively theatre festivals, rip-roaring rooftop circus and dreamy outdoor shows.