RITUAL

Claim your place in the sun and go forward into the light. The tools are there; the path is known; you simply have to turn your back on a culture that has gone sterile and dead, and get with the programme of a living world and a re-empowerment of the imagination.

McKenna

Usually to be found in the darkroom, Syd (Buron) Wytch (1977) has spent the last six months in a studio in the tropical house in Ventnor Botanical Gardens. He has attempted to go beyond the realm of witnessing the physical world with a camera, and has embarked on an exploration of imagination and vision, specifically - adoration of the Goddess; creating large oil paintings and a surrealistic ‘reverse peep-show’ in a wardrobe.

‘Eavesdropping on the Otherworld’ suggests glimpses of another reality unfiltered by our conscious minds. As well as creating new work for the show, Syd has been collecting work in which he recognises a similar objective of capturing an alternate world - genuinely odd pieces, sometimes ‘Lynchian’ dystopia, occasionally more fluffy. Each of these collected works has spoken to Syd in a unique voice that was difficult for him to ignore.

Two artists - Elina Rudzite and Lilium Wilkinson O’Dwyer have also been invited to include their work in the exhbition. Elina, originally from Latvia and currently residing in East Sussex, and Lilium lives between the Isle of Wight and Brighton. Both artists share an innate pursuit of transcendental exploration, and create portals to transport you there too.

Music is by ‘Liar, flower’ (KatieJane Garside and Chris Whittingham). Their new album 'ornamental gardens' is available now on Bandcamp (liarflower.bandcamp.com).

“I believe that magic is art, and that art, whether that be music, writing, sculpture, or any other form, is literally magic. Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words or images, to achieve changes in consciousness… Indeed to cast a spell is simply to spell, to manipulate words, to change peoples consciousness, and this is why I believe that an artist or writer is the closest thing in the contemporary world to a shaman”. (Alan Moore)