CLASS DESCRIPTION
Like most occultists of the twentieth century, occultist and surrealist Ithell Colquhoun was deeply interested in the intersections of spirituality and science, believing that the scientific advancements relating to the invisible world (X rays, radio waves, atomic theory) would prove the existence of spiritual planes and dimensions. From 1939-1942, as World War Two was raging, Colquhoun’s own magical and artistic practice was focused on an animistic notion of vitality, theorizing about the ways in which bodies and the earth held, and transferred energy. Through her wildly colorful landscape studies and a bold series of works devoted to sacred sexuality, Colquhoun explored how humans could connect to the divine through learning to direct the energy currents in their own bodies and through engaging with ancient sacred sites. Perhaps she believed that society could overcome its divisions through an integration with the sacred, fueled by energy from the portals of sacred landscapes and individuals’ elevated connections with one another as they embraced the potential to access dimensions more peaceful and enlightened than the unstable world around them.
This richly illustrated talk unpacks the occultural context and the embrace of empiricism that informed Colquhoun’s ideas about vital energies, followed by the ways in which Colquhoun explored union with the divine through sex magic and encounters with sacred sites. This explicit and revealing body of work theorizes the operationalization of women’s pleasure, the transcendence of gender and the activation of prehistoric megalithic monuments, all powered by the ability to harness and direct the electromagnetic currents that were the keys to ancient spiritual technologies, and that Colquhoun believed had the potential to heal humanity.
ABOUT OUR LECTURER
Amy Hale is an Atlanta based writer and critic with a PhD in Folklore and Mythology from UCLA. Her research interests include contemporary magical practice and history, art, culture, women and Cornwall. She has written widely on artist and occultist Ithell Colquhoun, and has been an academic advisor to the 2025 Colquhoun retrospective at Tate St. Ives and Tate Britain. She wrote the first scholarly biography of Colquhoun, Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully (Strange Attractor, 2020) followed by the collection Sex Magic: Diagrams of Love, (Tate Publishing, 2024), and A Walking Flame: Selected Magical Essays of Ithell Colquhoun (Strange Attractor 2025). She is also the editor of the groundbreaking collection Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses (Palgrave 2022). She has written extensively on magic and contemporary art for Tate, Burlington Contemporary, Art UK, The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Correspondences Journal and other institutions. She is an Honorary Research Fellow with Falmouth University in Cornwall, a trustee of the UK Charity Rediscovering Art by Women (RAW) and a member of the British Art Network. Beyond the Supernatural: Magic in Contemporary Art is due to be published with Tate Publishing in 2026.
INSTAGRAM: @amyhale93
SUBSTACK: @chasingthesupersensual
WEBSITE: www.amyhale.me
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SUMMER TERM 2025
Monday 5th May
Clelia McElroy (she/her)
Killjoy: Anti-Heroines of Thriller and Horror Cinema
Monday 12th May
Lucy Wright (she/her)
Tradition is Good for You!: A Feminist Reclamation of Folk
Monday 19th May
Dr Helen Gørrill (she/her)
Women Can't Paint: Gender, the Glass Ceiling and Values in Contemporary Art
Monday 26th May
Eleanor Medhurst (she/her)
A History of Queer Women's Hairstyles
Monday 2nd June
TBC
Monday 9th June
Minna Salami (she/her)
The Language of the Feminist Body
Monday 16th June
Dr. Kimberly Baltzer-Jaray (she/they)
Alien: A Perfect Queer Organism Film
Monday 23rd June
Daisy McManaman (she/her)
A Girl Resembles a Bunny: A Feminist Re-Analysis of Representations of Women in Playboy
Monday 30th June
Dr. Giulia Palladini (she/her)
For an Indomitable Domestics: Rethinking, Remaking, Reclaiming 'Home'
Monday 7th July
Amy Hale (she/her)
Ithell Colquhoun and The Vital Energies of Land and Body
Monday 14th July
Marie-Anne Mancio (she/her)
Whoreticulture: The Sexworker in Western Art
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