Blake's Old Haunt

About

 ‘Blake's Old Haunt’ refers to the house where William and his wife Catherine resided in the 1790’s, whilst also implying that he was haunted by spirits or perhaps his own imagination which Blake was so strongly absorbed by. Some of Blake’s influential phantasms appeared in this abode, informing infamous paintings such as ‘Ancient of Days’ and ‘The Ghost of a Flea.’ ‘The Ghost of Flea,’ (1819–20) was completed long after the Hercules Road hauntings. The vision of the grotesque and scaly amalgamation of flea and man who held a cup of blood lingered in Blake’s imagination decades after the visitation in 1790.

In pursuit of the physical manifestation of Blake’s imaginative visitations he collaborated on the book Visionary Heads (1819) with a friend, painter and astrologer John Varley. The set up embodied the format of a séance whereby Varley requests Blake to summon a selected mythological or historical character. When the spirit arrived, Blake drew their portrait. These invisible life drawing sessions where perhaps taken less seriously by Blake, but they were regularly undertaken and a testament to Blake’s dedication to the imagination.

‘Blake’s Old Haunt’ in part seeks to examine Blake through a contemporary perspective. The exhibition encompasses a diverse range of Blake inspired works, which reveal themes on the notion of haunting and the embodiment of sublime internal dialogues through an eclectic array of media. In the exhibition, artists Holly Birtles, Charly Blackburn, Luca George, Ben Jamie, Helen Knowles, Mark Leckey, Oliver McConnie and rechonski investigate these visions through reconstructed narratives, constructed performance, prop production, print making, costume, AI-generated entities and alternative ceramic firing processes.

It is a subject of scholarly debate whether Blake’s gothic visions were creative exercises of imagination, whereby he was able to summon forth a sort of Jungian archetype to be captured artistically, or, whether these were in fact hallucinations born of a mental illness. Others have claimed that the artist used psychedelic drugs or that the hallucinations were, in fact, real religious visions. However, the way Blake spoke about his visions and regular communication with phantoms from the afterlife could reflect the surreal reifications of the human psyche.

Curated by Holly Birtles and Phillip Reeves

Exhibition Scheduling

Private View - Saturday 29th April - 6pm - 9pm

Gallery Open

- Saturday 29th April  -12pm – 9pm

- Sunday 30th April     -12pm - 9pm

- Saturday 6th May      -12pm - 6pm

- Sunday 7th May        -12pm – 9pm  

- By Appointment – Tuesday 2nd May – Friday 5th May

Special Events and Performances

Helen Knowles - Trust The Medicine - Psychedelic Integration Group

Offsite at Park Plaza Hotel - 6 Hercules Road, SE1 7DP

- Sunday 30th April

– 1st Session - 3pm - 5pm

– 2nd Session - 6pm - 8pm

To book a place in the performance please contact helen.r.knowles@northumbria.ac.uk

The Blake Society and Friends Special Closing Event at Hercules Road

- Sunday 7th May – 6pm - 9pm

Life Drawing, Puppet Theatre, Performances, Poetry and more from -

Ezra Elia

Sibylle Erle

Stephen Micalef

Camila Oliveira

Stephen Pritchard

Camila Querino

John Riordan

Annise Rogers

Marina Sossi

Richard Shields

Tamsin Rosewell

Professor Jason Whittaker

Youth

Special Thanks to The Blake Society and the hard work of all the artists involved Blake Mosaic Walk Map provided by The London School of Mosaics

Find us on Instagram - @hercules_road_

Contact for appointments or information – phillipmichaelreeves@gmail.com or hollybirtles@hotmail.co.uk