Georgiana Houghton: Spirit Drawings - Exhibition and accompanying catalogue
- Submitting institution
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Courtauld Institute of Art
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 90
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- The Courtauld Gallery, London
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
- June
- Year of first exhibition
- 2016
- URL
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-
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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3
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The output Georgina Houghton: Spirit Drawings is a curatorial project consisting of an exhibition (The Courtauld, London, 16 June – 11 September 2016) and an accompanying catalogue.
This portfolio has two components:
1) The catalogue Wright and Veglin van Claerbergen eds, Georgina Houghton: Spirit Drawings (The Courtauld/Paul Holberton Publishing, 2016). Wright catalogued the works and co-authored a short introduction to the catalogue section.
2) A dossier illustrating: preparatory research, object-based research, exhibition installation and design, and dissemination events.
In 2014, Wright was approached by a scholar with an interest in a group of abstract watercolours produced ‘whilst under spiritual guidance’ by the Victorian Spiritualist, Georgiana Houghton. Wright took up the proposal to instigate a research-led exhibition project for display at The Courtauld. This marked the first time these largely unknown and historically important works had been seen since Houghton showed them in 1871.
Wright convened three scholars with relevant specialisms and knowledge of Houghton’s drawings to contribute. He led the exhibition project, establishing, researching, cataloguing and arranging photography of the known examples of Houghton’s work, held largely by The Victorian Spiritualist Union in Melbourne, Australia, with further examples in the College of Psychic Studies in London and in the possession of one of Houghton’s descendants. Wright worked closely with Monash University Museum of Art, who showed some of the works shortly before they travelled to London.
Wright’s two principal research aims of the project were, 1. to establish the scope and material character of the works, including the method of their production, revealing and understanding the elaborate inscriptions on the backs of the work; 2. contextualising the works historically and in relation to the later development of twentieth-century abstract art, reintroducing Houghton’s work to this narrative as an important and largely overlooked early forerunner of modernist abstraction.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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