LONDON.- Swedenborg House opened Visionary Landscapes, an exhibition exploring the relationship between landscape, imagination and visionary states. Curated by Museum Director Stephen McNeilly, the exhibition brings together historic works in dialogue with contemporary paintings, photography and film.
Organized, in part, to showcase new acquisitions into the Swedenborg Collection, including works by William Blake, F H Evans and Francis Oliver Finch, the exhibition draws together key works from contemporary and historical artists including surrealist painter Malcolm de Chazal, occultist Austin Osman Spare, filmmaker Andrew Ktting, musician Jem Finer, photographer Jason Orton, psychogeographer Iain Sinclair, and writer Alice Albinia amongst others.
Drawing on questions of representation, correspondences, climate, environment, memory and place, the exhibition invites us to re-evaluate landscape as an internal state and asks us to view nature itself as a threshold between visible and invisible realms.
“According to Swedenborg, Blake, Finch and others, the landscape of consciousness has its own laws which are no less objective and binding than the laws of nature,” says the curator, Stephen McNeilly. “This exhibition explores this idea, and the various ways in which our representations of landscape give rise to the threshold between inner and outer states.”
The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of public events, screenings and a book launch. Features of this programme will include: Uta Kgelsberger's five-channel video work Forest Choir will be installed for two weeks in Swedenborg Hall from Thursday 1 October–Friday 16 October; as part of the John Berger Centenary, and in collaboration with Objectif Press, an evening of conversation with John Christie and Ken Worpole to mark the publication of John Berger’s Four Horizons (Objectif Press, 2026) on Thursday 8 October; an event by Dean Anthony Kenning on Thursday 22 October; a screening of the film Zenae (2022, 16 mins) by the collective Islands of Women, with an accompanying conversation; the launch of a publication by Alice Albinia; and a special extended element to the exhibition opened exclusively on Thursdays in the Gardiner Room, to accompany our Thursday Lates.
Curated by:
Stephen McNeilly is the Museum Director at Swedenborg House. He has curated numerous exhibitions and events including Elective Affinities (2025–6) and Swedenborg’s Lusthus: On Memory and Place (2024).
Alice Albinia, William Blake, Colin Buttimer, Heather Cartwright, Malcolm de Chazal, Edward Chell, F H Evans, Francis Oliver Finch, Stephen Gill, Dean Anthony Kenning, Uta Kgelsberger, Andrew Ktting/Jem Finer, Jock McFadyen, Jason Orton, Mark Riley, Iain Sinclair, Austin Osman Spare, plus items from the Swedenborg Collection.
