Histories, Shadows, Visions and Dreams

The Masked Monkeys of Indonesia are trained by masters who belong to the lowest rungs of Javanese society. The story of their craft inside this ancient spiritual tradition mirrors persisting social hierarchies, equating the monkeys’ learned behaviours to their masters’ desire to overcome their plight. Lewis Vandercar was a mystic, a sculptor, and notorious for spell-casting and telepathy. Half Human, Half Vapor focusses on the remnants of a dilapidated mansion and a sculpture garden ravaged by hurricanes. Combined with texts from a haunted house film, they are a fitting portrayal one man’s real life fascination with the other worldly. The immaterial becomes tangible in Vintage Print; an increasingly intense and ecstatic audio-visual trip through a psychedelic inferno, conjured up from a 19th century glass-plate negative of a nature scene. In Black Apples, author Iain Sinclair returns to rural Wales from London. Whilst reflecting on his memories of Wales and the Welsh landscape that have influenced and stayed with the artist throughout his life, on-screen texts accompany surreal images of ‘animals’ at play near a mysterious cavern