A transformer links together two or more electrical circuits in order to transfer electrical energy between the circuits. Similarly, ley lines are believed by many people to be metaphysical connections that carry natural or supernatural energies and link a number of sacred sites around the world.
This exhibition views artists as transformers, being those who, through ‘shamanism, technology, speculative realism, energy transference, intimacy and healing,’ enable ‘the singular to become multiple and prismatic.’[i] Such artists render the binary defunct.
The exhibition takes place in 180 The Strand which the curator Jefferson Hack believes, following site and historical surveys, to be intersected by London’s main ley lines and on the edge of an ancient holy well at St Clement Danes. This information has been ultilised in structuring the exhibition as a grid at the centre of which is Evan Ifekoya’s ‘Prophetic Map I: Toju Ba Farabale.’
Ifekoya’s multisensory and sonic installations are drawn from the practices of consciousness exploration and multi-faith research. So here, at the heart of the exhibition space, is a gold-coated steel Merkaba, studded with orgonite, which offers the visitor a space in which to unite spirit with body, while surrounded by light. The Merkaba, which takes the shape of a star with divine energy expanding in all four directions at all times, is designed to connect the spirit and body to higher realms.
This cavernous installation into which we descend on entry is where we ‘find true connection,’ a space in which ‘to escape to commune, contemplate and conduct emergent ideas and identities.’ This is art as religion. This is the art of tomorrow fueled by the beliefs of the ancients; a not dissimilar experience to the birth of abstraction fueled as it was by a variety of mystical strands including Anthroposophy, Christian Science, Eastern philosophy, Rosicrucianism, Spiritualism, Theosophy, and various Eastern and Western religions.
Such root influences on modernism were for many years suppressed by those who advocated formalist or rationalist readings of modern art. However, from the 'The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985’at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art onwards the religious roots of modern art have increasingly been acknowledged - albeit with a focus on esoteric spirituality rather than institutional religion - along with the recognition, as in this exhibition, that an astonishingly high proportion of visual artists have been and continue to be involved with these ideas and belief systems.
The journey in to ‘Transformer’ is via work by Donna Huanca, Doug Aitken, Lawrence Lek, Chen Wei, Quentin Lancombe, Korakrit Arunanondchai and Jenn Nkiru. The journey out takes in works by Juliana Huxtable, Harley Weir & George Rouy, Dozie Kanu, and Sophia Al-Maria and Victoria Sin. The show takes visitors on a subterranean journey through a series of worlds that explore themes of ritual, identity, magic, political reality, social transformation and the role of the individual in relation to our collective future.
Donna Huanca’s multisensorial work focuses on the idea of the collective body as a transmitter and vessel for change. Doug Aitken shows an expanded version of his ‘New Order’ artwork, which features an interview with Martin Cooper, inventor of the cell phone, whose reminiscences about the first call made in 1973 are transposed over haunting and desolate images of landscapes. VR artist Lawrence Lek recreates the interiors of a glossy nightclub – a virtual version of which is projected on screens above, accompanied by an electric soundtrack. Korakrit Arunanondchai’s three videos invite us into an uncanny spiritual realm of Thai folklore, music culture and animism. The diaristic observations and assertions of Juliana Huxtable highlight a critical engagement with interdependence, care and community. Held in the safe at 180 The Strand, Harley Weir & George Rouy’s works speak to the eternal cycle of energy and the transcendence of experience beyond flesh, time and space.
The title of the show is inspired by beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s ‘I Am Waiting’, which comments on the societal problems of America in his day and time, and calls for a change of consciousness – the rebirth of a new wonder: ‘I am waiting for my case / to come up / and I am waiting / for a rebirth of wonder / and I am waiting for someone / to really discover America.’ Ferlinghetti ‘s impassioned call for social change through a new sense of wonder continues to ring true in today’s fractured political landscape. Jefferson Hack sees these ‘Transformer’ artists as contemporary equivalents to Ferlinghetti: ‘They are world-makers,’ who ‘look deeply into the present and see the future.’ To visit is to engage with the spirituality of consciousness and change, as much as with their creative, political and social sources.
[i] Jefferson Hack, ‘Introduction’ to ‘Transformer: A rebirth of wonder’, 180 The Strand, The Store X & Vinyl Factory, 2019.
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