To mark the publication and opening of a major new exhibition and book, we are delighted to announce a special event involving Chloe Aridjis, Daniel Birnbaum, Deborah Levy, Bridget Smith, Iain Sinclair and Ken Worpole in conversation with the curator/editor Stephen McNeilly.

Part reliquary, part sanctum and part tourist attraction, Swedenborg’s lusthus has long been an object of pilgrimage and curiosity. Built as a wooden retreat at the far end of his garden in Stockholm in 1747 and serving as a focal point for his writing and otherworldly conversations, it has come to stand as an emblematic presence of his visionary legacy for over 250 years. 

Showcasing new works by Daniel Birnbaum, Anonymous Bosch, John Christie, Mark Riley, Iain Sinclair, Bridget Smith, Ben Wickey and others, in conjunction with previously unseen artefacts from the collection at Swedenborg House and items on loan from the Center for Swedenborgian Studies in the US, the event marks the occasion of the Swedenborg Birthday Meeting and also sees the launch of Swedenborg’s Lusthus, a fully illustrated book exploring the building in which Swedenborg wrote his late visionary works. For more information on the book, please click on the image.

In Conversation

CHLOE ARIDJIS is the author of three novels, Book of Clouds, which won the Prix du premier roman étranger in France, Asunder, set in London’s National Gallery, and Sea Monsters, awarded the 2020 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

DANIEL BIRNBAUM is the artistic director of Acute Art, a laboratory for art and digital media in London. 2010-2018 he was the director of Moderna Museet in Stockholm. He is a contributing editor of Artforum. In 2009 he curated the Venice Biennale.

DEBORAH LEVY is one of the UK’s greatest contemporary novelists and author of the living autobiographies, Things I Don’t Want to Know, The Cost of Living and Real Estate—for which she was awarded the Prix Femina Etranger in France and the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autographical Prose in the USA.

IAIN SINCLAIR has lived in and written about London since 1969. A renowned poet, essayist and writer of fiction, his novels include Downriver, for which he won the James Tait Black Prize and the Encore Prize, and Dining on Stones which was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize.

BRIDGET SMITH is a London-based artist represented by Frith Street Gallery. She has exhibited her work internationally, featuring in public collections in Austria, Spain, Mexico, the USA and the UK (including the V&A and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art).

KEN WORPOLE is a writer and social historian whose distinctive work includes books on architecture, landscape and public policy. A new edition of his pioneering book, Modern Hospice Design: the architecture of palliative and social care, has just been published.

Curator

STEPHEN MCNEILLY is an editor, writer, artist, curator and museum director of Swedenborg House, and one of the leading scholars on Swedenborg in the UK. He has curated numerous exhibitions and events, the most recent being Concerning an Idea about Place (2023) and is the editor of numerous books including Swedenborg’s Lusthus.

Header image: Daniel Birnbaum, 2019.