Description

The fourth issue of the Swedenborg Society’s annual periodical featuring articles and reviews on contemporary events and books plus other cultural and literary activities. The front half of this edition is guest edited by Gareth Evans.

A copy of the latest issue of the Swedenborg Review is free to all Members of the Swedenborg Society and Friends of Swedenborg House, along with other benefits, including a free gift of a notebook or sketchbook, and a 20% discount of titles in our bookshop (both at Swedenborg House and on the online bookstore). You can be a Friend of Swedenborg House for just £5 a year.

 

 

 

Contents

• Editorial Note
• Welcome from the guest editor—Gareth Evans
  

Guest edited content

1. The Wisdom of Solomon Pyramid—Iain Sinclair. A preview extract from Iain Sinclair’s forthcoming book on John Deakin.
2. Raft: A Fragile Display—Chiara Ambrosio. A sample from the author’s multidisciplinary art project.
3. The Mystagogue: Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg and the Art of the Occult—Gillian McIver. An essay on an underappreciated artist and occult personality.
   
4. The Edge of Sleep—David Harsent. A new sequence of poems is here presented complete.
   
5. Raimondo di Sangro: Dispatches from the Neapolitan Enlightenment—Marius Kociejowski. An extract from the author’s new book on Naples and its history.
6. Seagull—Oliver Bancroft. A painting from the distinctive filmmaker and artist’s recent series.
   
7. bookartbookshop: On a unique cabinet of curiosities—Tanya Peixoto. A look at the history of one of London’s unique bookshops.
   
8. Notes on making Wayfaring Stranger—Andrea Luka Zimmerman. Field notes from the filmmaker and artist’s work on her forthcoming film.
   
9. The Great Escape—Nicholas Royle. A profile on the artist Mike Nelson and how books feature in his work.
   
10. Towards the Last Movies—Stanley Schtinter. Notes ahead of the author’s book and film series in 2023.
    
11. Untitled and Red Legs—Oliver Bancroft. Two further examples from the artist’s latest series of paintings.
    
12. Dreadful charm: Yōkai that resides at the threshold of the unknown—Michiko Oki. A look at the array of spirits that feature in Japanese folklore.
    
13. Sanatorium pod Klepsydra—Quay Brothers. Exclusive centrespread image from the inimitable filmmakers.
    
14. 5 Pebbles From The Shore And One Other—Stephen Watts. A special selection of poems and ‘drawn poems’.
    
15. Between Talons and Teeth—Niall Griffiths. An extract from the author’s forthcoming novel of the same name.
    

Regular features

1. Chloe Aridjis: Stilled Shadows—Josh Appignanesi. A review of Chloe Aridjis’s magic lantern show.
   
2. Birds to think with—Sanjoy Roy. A review of Martin Cottis’s exhibition, A Nest of Correspondences.
   
3. Avian Drift: Swedenborg, Correspondences and Birds—James Wilson. An examination of birdlife in the thought and work of Swedenborg.
   
4. The Story of Swedenborg in 27 Objects—Avery Curran. A review of the exhibition The Story of Swedenborg in 27 Objects.
   
5. Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu and other Irish Swedenborgians: A Mystery Resolved?—Peter C Humphreys. A look at Dublin’s literary connections to Swedenborg.
   
6. Albion, Awake!: William Blake Live on Stage—Sibylle Erle. A review of Visionary Company’s play about the life of William Blake.
   
7. Swedenborg’s London: Wellclose Square—James Wilson. A look at part of East London, where Swedenborg once resided.
   
8. In Search of the Human Soul: An Interview with Vincent Roy-Di Piazza—Vincent Roy-Di Piazza in conversation with James Wilson.
   
9. Swedenborg Film Festival: A Cosmic Slice—Sally O’Reilly. A look at the annual film festival.
   
10. Events Round-Up—A look back at the programme across 2021-22.
    
11. Swedenborg House YouTube Channel—Simran Hussain. An overview of the films and talks you can view for free.
    
12. Bookshop—Some new titles available online and at Swedenborg House.

 

Author bios

CHIARA AMBROSIO is a filmmaker, visual artist, curator and event producer. For more information, visit www.acuriousroom.com.

JOSH APPIGNANESI is a writer/director whose films include Husband (2022), The New Man (2016), The Infidel (2010), Song of Songs (2005) and Female Human Animal (2018), starring Chloe Aridjis. He mentors, advises and teaches internationally for institutions including the London Film School, Guardian Masterclasses, Film London and Roehampton University.

OLIVER BANCROFT is an artist and filmmaker.

JACOB CARTWRIGHT is an artist and filmmaker.

MARTIN COTTIS has worked as a public / community artist for several years with commissions for: British Waterways; HMS President; Inter-Action; the Brunel Museum; and many schools, youth clubs, etc. He has exhibited work in London, Manchester, Brussels, Ghent and Rotterdam.

AVERY CURRAN is a writer, artist’s assistant and freelance editor living in London. She graduated from the University of Oxford with a degree in History and completed an MA in Victorian Studies at Birkbeck.

SIBYLLE ERLE is Visiting Scholar at the University of Lincoln, UK. She is the author of Blake, Lavater and Physiognomy (2010); co-editor of The Reception of William Blake in Europe (2019) and Monsters: Interdisciplinary Explorations in Monstrosity (2019-2020); and edited Blake in Europe (2022). Sibylle was co-curator of the 2010-11 Tate Britain display Blake and Physiognomy and is editor of VALA, the journal of the Blake Society.

GARETH EVANS is a writer, editor, event / film producer and curator.

ALEXANDER FINGRUTD is a filmmaker, animator and photographer.

NIALL GRIFFITHS is the acclaimed writer of many novels, as well as a volume of poetry and several works of non-fiction. Born in Toxteth, Liverpool, he has lived in Aberystwyth for many years.

DAVID HARSENT‘s thirteen collections have won a number of awards, including the Forward Prize, the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Griffin International Award. He has collaborated with a number of composers, most often with Harrison Birtwistle. Harsent-Birtwistle pieces have been performed at major venues worldwide.

PETER C HUMPHREYS is a historian of Church History and a retired Congregational minister based in Dublin. Peter studied at Liverpool University, Reading University, University College London and University of Lampeter, Wales. He was formerly the minister of Kilmainham Congregational Church, Dublin and he is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society.

SIMRAN HUSSAIN is a publishing assistant studying linguistics at UCL.

MARIUS KOCIEJOWSKI is a poet, essayist and travel writer. Among the books he has written are The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool: A Syrian Journey (Eland, 2016) and a sequel, The Pigeon Wars of Damascus. He lives in London, England where, until recently, he worked as an antiquarian bookseller, a period vividly recalled in his recent memoir A Factotum in the Book Trade (Biblioasis, 2022).

GILLIAN MCIVER is a writer, filmmaker and curator based in London. She completed her Ph.D. at Roehampton University on art history, cinema and the sublime. She is the author of Art History for Filmmakers: The Art of Visual Storytelling (Bloomsbury, 2016) and the forthcoming Between Realism and the Sublime. She works between London and Cairo where she is interested in the reclamation of Egyptian magical motifs in contemporary Egyptian art. She is currently Associate Lecturer at the University of the Creative Arts and at Central St Martins.

STEPHEN MCNEILLY is the Executive and Museum Director of the Swedenborg Society. He has curated numerous exhibitions at Swedenborg House and is series editor of the Swedenborg Archive Series and the Journal of the Swedenborg Society.

MICHIKO OKI is an art historian and writer, and a lecturer in art history.

THE QUAY BROTHERS are award-winning filmmakers and animators.

SALLY O’REILLY writes and makes videos and performances. Recent projects include Where They Gather, an album with Kit Downes (October House Records, 2022). Works of fiction include The Ambivalents (Cabinet, 2017) and Crude (Eros, 2016). For more information, visit www.sallyoreilly.org.uk.

TANYA PEIXOTO is The Benign Inquisitor of the London Institute of ‘Pataphysics.

SANJOY ROY writes on dance for the Guardian, is editor of Springback Magazine of European contemporary dance, and author of Work/World (2022), a collection of exploratory essays on works by Belgian choreographer Ann Van den Broek. For more information, visit www.sanjoyroy.net.

VINCENT ROY-DI PIAZZA is a postdoctoral associate in history at the University of Oxford. He recently defended his D.Phil. thesis at Oxford, titled ‘Homo Maximus: Emanuel Swedenborg and the Interaction of Soul and Body’ in 2022, and was the first recipient of a Swedenborg Doctoral Scholarship from the Swedenborg Society. For more information, follow him on Twitter @RoyDiPiazza.

NICHOLAS ROYLE is an author, anthologist, publisher, translator, editor and agent. He publishes new short stories through Nightjar Press (https://nightjarpress.weebly.com/). His own next collection, Manchester Uncanny, is forthcoming from Confingo.

STANLEY SCHTINTER has been described as an ‘artist’ by the Daily Mail, and as an ‘exorcist’ by the Daily Star. For more information on The Last Movies visit schtinter.net.

IAIN SINCLAIR is one of London’s greatest chroniclers and a prolific writer of essays, poetry, fiction and many hybrid works. His recent book, The Gold Machine (Oneworld, 2021) is now in paperback.

CHARLIE TYMMS is a puppet designer / maker who works in theatre, film and the visual arts.

KESSLER VOGES is an artist, designer and photographer.

STEPHEN WATTS is a poet, translator, anthologist and bibliographer. His new collection, Journeys Across Breath, has just been published by Prototype. A collection of Watts’s Drawn Poems is forthcoming from Joe Hales Studio imprint Sylvi.

JAMES WILSON is the author of several books, including a new volume of prose poems, Eclectica Canticorum, and the short story collection, In cages, as in dreams. His novel Three Bridges was issued in 2014.

THOMAS ZANON-LARCHER is a photographer.

ANDREA LUKA ZIMMERMAN is a Jarman Award winning filmmaker, cultural activist and artist whose engaged practice calls for a profound re-imagining of the relationship between people, place and ecology. For more information, visit https://www.fugitiveimages.org.uk/.