Ben Apfelbaum

GEORGIANA HOUGHTON : INVISIBLE FRIENDS @ ART GALLERY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

 

‘‘ I must explain that in the  execution of the drawings my hand has been entirely guided by spirits, no idea being formed in my own mind as to what was going to be traduced nor did I know, when a stroke commenced, whether it would be carried upwards or downwards.‘‘

The rise of spiritualism in Victorian era London was fired by a reaction to rationalism, dogmatic Christianity and patriarchal culture. For Horton, spiritualism enabled a closer relationship to God, while art enabled the creative expression of the bond between the visible world and the invisible realm..

The drawings were produced in London during the 1860s and 1870s. Prefiguring the abstract modernism of artists like Kandinsky by 50 years, Houghton created her visionary drawings with the help of invisible friends – long dead artists, family, friends and angels – and declared them to be works of art without parallel in the world.

Houghton who likely trained as an artist in France, firmly resisted any implication that relinquished all creative control when a guide told her she was only a machine, Horton reminded him personally “that I had taught him much about modern colours I could add and I could always leave off when I pleased.”

As well as angelic beings, several Houghton guides were identified as famous artists including Correggio,Titian and Thomas Lawrence

Houghton recorded her collaborations with the spirits on the back of her works, establishing a bond between image and text.

Today, 35 of Houghton ‘s 46 works extant in the world are in the care of the Victorian Spiritualist union, their facsimiles adorning a church in North Melbourne as a physical manifestation of Spirit.

The exhibition  GEORGIANA HOUGHTON ‘INVISIBLE FRIENDS’ is on display at the Art Gallery of New South Wales until the  10th March 2024.

Featured image : Georgiana Houghton ‘The flower of Helen Butler 1861, courtesy of the Victorian Spiritualists’ Union Inc, Melbourne, Australia.

Published by Ben Apfelbaum

My photography began when my father handed me the proverbial brownie box camera as a child. As cameras developed I went through Fujica and Olympus range finders graduating to my first single lens reflex camera, the Minolta SRT101, the latter being the greatest facilitator to my growth as a photographer. Digital photography has only added to this. I was a regular contributor to Camera Craft magazine (Australian Camera ) for over three years. During Australia’s Bicentennial year (1988) I made it a personal project to document the celebrations. This culminated in the creation of a book of my photos which was published in 1989. The book was called CELEBRATING AUSTRALIA and came with an accompanying calendar. My works have appeared in a number of publications including the coffee book entitled MY AUSTRALIA (1989), publisher Robertsbridge Severn. This book had a preface by the then Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke. I was a co-photographer on a book entitled SYDNEY- DISCOVER THE CITY with text written by Robert Treborlang. Major Mitchell Press was the publisher. Also for two years I was the photographer for calendars celebrating Sydney’s multicultural communities. The two calendars were entitled MULTICULTURAL SYDNEY. My work appeared in a group exhibition held at Sydney’s Town Hall pertaining to the diversity of life in South America to raise money for orphanages there. I have over one hundred photos stored in the New South Wales State Library archive. I had a solo exhibition held in 2007 entitled Ben’s Lens at the Sydney Jewish Museum which celebrated the vibrancy of the Sydney Jewish community. Some of these photos are on the Museum’s permanent display. I have exhibited internationally firstly at the Spruill Gallery in Atlanta Georgia, United States, and in an exhibition entitled Kosher and Co at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Currently I am a regular contributor to J-Wire and this esteemed publication. To celebrate the opening of a permanent Photography Gallery, the State Library of New South Wales selected 400 shots from its archive of over 2,000,000 images to display in the new gallery. An image of mine was plucked out of the multi million photo archive to be part of the inaugural exhibition.