peck o’ trouble: an exhibition exploring notions of magic | guest speaker events
Suzanne O’Haire has invited guest speakers to stir magical thought during this solo exhibition where she presents 34 sculptural assemblages performing as supposed sigils or spells. Hosted by John Marchant, Sally is the first speaker in this series of three talks.
Sally O’Reilly | Tense Intents Nonsense Ken | Sat 10 November 5.30 - 7pm
Spelling. To cast a spell is to exploit, or possibly to create, a wormhole in common-sensical causality. When a spell takes effect, the recognised means through which that effect ordinarily comes into being are overridden. To write is also to override immediate reality, to cause something else to come to pass or to be – the difference between writing and sorcery being that, other than the printed page, that which is written into existence is not physical. But it is tangible. To write is to cast a spell on the reader, to insert a new idea or image into their … what? Their imagination, their understanding, which are … where exactly? The Stoics believed knowledge to be stored throughout the body, and that false or ambiguous information would infect the body of knowledge, the self and, through subsequent ill-informed behaviour, the entire civic body. Where a sorcerer studs a lemon with nails and hides it in the walls of those to be stricken with a mysterious ague or financial or romantic ruin, a writer combines words and secretes them deep within the reader, who then moves through the world in possession of some new, potentially influenzal thought.
Sally O’Reilly writes for performance, page and video. Publications include the novella The Ambivalents (Cabinet, NY, 2017), the novel Crude (Eros Press, 2016), a monograph on Mark Wallinger (Tate Publishing, 2014), The Body in Contemporary Art (Thames & Hudson, 2009) and the interdisciplinary broadsheet Implicasphere (co-editor, 2003-8). She has also written libretti for the operas The Virtues of Things (Royal Opera, Aldeburgh Music, Opera North, 2015) and And London Burned (Temple Music Foundation, 2016). Her short fiction has been published by Cabinet magazine, Various Small Fires, Artenol, Contemporary Art Society, Picpus and London Underground
Tickets are £4.50 and available via www.eventbrite.com
Seating at the venue limited to 40 capacity. Each talk will be an hour duration with a half hour Q&A at the end. A bar will be available. £1.50 from the sale of each ticket will be donated to the Regency Town House Restoration Project.
Exhibition admission free
2 - 25 November 2018
Mon - Tues: by appointment only
Wed - Fri: 11:00am - 6:00pm
Sat - Sun: 12noon - 4:00pm
Title text: VujaDe by Virus Font
November 2018