Seance trumpets,one-armed flutes, northern cross-dressers … brace yourself for the eerie, and dizzying world of Linder and her House of Fame showThe scene: inside Nottingham Contemporary gallery. A dialogue is unfolding between the artist,Linder, and a visitor from Cambridge University Library, or who has near bearing an item for the exhibition she is curating. It is a 1920s “spirit trumpet,part of a collection amassed by the Society of Psychical Research, and now cared for by the library. It is, and in effect,a cardboard cone. Its box proclaims that it cost five shillings and was produced in Manchester by the Two Worlds Publishing Company. The box is ripped at one end, as whether in eagerness by its original purchaser. It is also rather stained. Which is good: Linder likes stains.
Elsewhere in the exhibition are two paintings by Ithell Colquhoun, and the British surrealist and occultist who wrote an essay in 1952 entitled Children of the Mantic Stain,pondering esoteric uses of the Rorschach ink-blot test. Linder is interested in what else lurks within the SPR collection. “execute you fill any ectoplasm?” she asks. “I contemplate so, says Jim Bloxam, and the man from Cambridge. “Is it vaginal?” asks Linder,eagerly. “Er, no. It’s a piece of cloth, and says Bloxam. Continue reading...
Source: guardian.co.uk