Magical Consciousness

About

Magical Consciousness is about considering when images are no longer enough. It is a group exhibition developed in collaboration with the renowned artist-filmmaker Runa Islam that looks for the potential that comes out of denying or abstracting images. This exhibition considers the possibility of seeing yourself seeing things differently. Magical Consciousness presents works by a selection of artists who look for images at the edges of perception. Rosà ¢ngela Rennó's video Rosa Vera, 2001, gets its first presentation in the UK - an 'impossible film' without imagery documenting the arrival of the first Portuguese settlers in Brazil. Ellen Harvey's Collection of Impossible Subjects, 2008, an interpretation of a salon-style museum etched onto a large mirror-wall, displays elaborate frames but with the images replaced with glowing light. Historic conceptual works include Helena Almeida's sequence of photographs Inhabited Painting, 1976, in which she paints herself out of the image using International Klein Blue. Magical Consciousness is titled in reference to the work of philosopher Vilém Flusser, who suggested that there is more potential to touch reality in the act of looking itself rather than in what is actually being looked at or through using descriptive text, because of the latent potential of the viewer's imagination. Co-curated by Runa Islam and Arnolfini