COMPTON VERNEY.- From a cabin in a Kentish forest to Hollywood, and then obscurity – the story of Elizabeth Allen’s life and work mirrors her creations in its unconventionality.

Now, 60 years after her debut exhibition, her absurd, bitterly funny and often boldly prophetic creations are being re-discovered, and Compton Verney will display 12 of her textiles, including ones never seen in public before.

These will be displayed alongside works by other visionary artists, creatives who have made work in similar ways as Allen. These artists are also interested in the supernatural and religion, and who take elements of real world and make it strange through their work.

Troublemakers and Prophets: Elizabeth Allen and Other Visionary Artists will display these works over four rooms, where visitors will experience the topsy-turvy realm of seers gifted with sight beyond this world.

This includes large scale sculpture to detailed beadwork, using materials such as photographs, furniture, clothes, and snippets of news, religion and folklore, that showcase how struggles and isolation can be transcended through creating images of community, recognition, or reckoning.

And at the centre is an artist of a unique variety – the enigmatic, eclectic and eccentric Elizabeth Allen (1883-1967).

A metal cabin may not seem a natural home for a visionary artist with a divine calling, but Allen is testament to how genius can spring from anywhere, and how her unique beliefs represented a way of gaining and asserting a sense of control in her life.
One of 17 children born to Irish German immigrants in North London, Allen joined the family tailor business at an early age due to the demand of the First World War, and it is believed her first foray into art began by getting her hands on the leftover fabric offcuts.

Born with curvature of the spine and one leg shorter than the other, Allen’s life would appear to some as one of continuing hardship and misfortune. She was thrown out of her family home for her deeply held religious convictions and then evicted from a house she rented from a vicar’s wife. Following a period of homelessness, she ended up living for the rest of her life in isolation in a cabin in Biggin Hill (now Greater London), refusing medical treatment, and adopting the name ‘Queen’ that she first started using in childhood in a way to liken herself to Queen Elizabeth I.

It was here that she continued to create her fabric art, mostly at night when she chose to be awake due to a fear of the dark. She was heavily influenced by a quasi-mystical reading of the Old Testament including the belief of an impending apocalypse (which she thought would happen in 1996), as well as contemporary concerns she heard on the radio - from the actions of Wall Street to African revolutionary movements and the rise of popular culture.

Through a chance encounter with an art student and gaining fans including Patrick Heron (1920-1999) and Michael Kidner (1917-2009), Allen’s textile proclamations found an audience at London’s Crane Kalman Gallery in 1966. Solo exhibitions followed in New York and L.A where her work was purchased by Oscar-winning actress Joanne Woodward (b.1930).

However, although on the brink of worldwide recognition, Allen would not see most of this success as she died in 1967, the year following her first London exhibition. Like Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) before her, she never lived to see the extent of her work’s popularity around the world, and perhaps because of this, her work entered a period of relative obscurity and disappeared from public view - but is now seeing a resurgence in interest.

12 colourful works from the depths of her imagination have been brought together for this exhibition, which will also include the first-ever public display of her handmade fabric book - The Autobiraggraphy of her called Elizabeth Allen, In the Year of Grace 1961 – encompassing everything from her birth to her eviction, as well as dragons and angels.

Other works showcase the fantastical unreality that lurks behind everyday troubles, from three headed eagles to Babylon the Great from the Book of Revelation, still births, police injustice and bittersweet domestic bliss. All of these demonstrate her sewing skill, wit and precise needlework which she used to translate her beliefs and reactions into awe-inspiring images.

Remarkably, there is no evidence that Allen even visited an art gallery or museum, and no interest in the art world can be found on her bookshelves. Even so, her work appears to resemble a host of recognisable work from Modern art to Etruscan frescoes and even the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Visions drawing on biblical texts, art history and social context will be on display, highlighting the histories of seer women who were informed by folkloric stories. Babylon Riding on the Great Red Dragon (c1966) highlights Christian and Pagan representations of Babylon, both as a city and a harlot, conjuring up ides of female autonomy, while The Three-Headed Eagle of Prophecy (1966) relates to the representation of fate and prophecy as a beast and the long-tradition of symbolism of threes.

Works will explore how Allen’s pictures spoke beyond the small world in which she resided, such as The Great Silence (1967), depicting a moonlight scene, and The Great Swan Song (c 1967) which demonstrates the strangeness of remote communication and the inherent good and bad that comes with doing so from isolation.

The textile collage Population Explosion (1965) has for many years been housed at Compton Verney as part of the British Folk Art Collection, having been first collected by Andras Kalman (a personal champion of Queen) and will now be shown amongst work from other artists that explore motherhood, sickness and spiritual protection.
The work, inspired by a radio report concerning a woman who gave birth to seven stillborn babies after taking a fertility drug, also draws on her own experience of health and disability and the issue of body autonomy.

Her take on collective visions and spiritual solidarity are shown in works such as Church Interior (c 1967) and Beetles Come and Go but Christ Remains Forever (c 1967) highlighting the shared following of Jesus Christ, while The Black Feet are Kicking (c 1966) depicts a different group collective with a focus on the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

There will also be a display of reproduced works whose whereabouts are currently unknown, while another gallery will emulate the atmosphere of her corrugated-iron cabin, both cosy and carefully decorated, while also dusty and overgrown.

A new film commission from British Kenyan visual artist Grace Ndiritu (b.1982) will also be shown. The Rehearsal (2026), which has been supported by Compton Verney, is Ndiritu’s new existential and shamanic film where mass collective grief is examined when a female Christ figure working on Wall Street sees her 12 activist disciples transformed into animals.

The exhibition will also feature bold and brilliant work from other prophetic artists who assemble work with the same level of obsession and instinct, gathering materials in a magpie-like manner. These include a biblical exploration by Helen Chadwick (1953-1996), a nuclear warning by Louise Odes Neaderland (1932-2022), and photographic collages of feminine spirituality by Penny Slinger (b.1947), as well as many other artists and works exploring ancestry, meteorites, myths, reality, the Malleus Maleficarum, and the Hindu concept of the Tridevi.

Curator Ila Colley says "Allen’s visions are pertinent to our post-truth era. Her hybrid messages resonate with interest in newslore, social networks, conspiracy and cult media, exploring how we can interpret our fragmentary world and stitch it back together to make sense of it."