Description

The fifth issue of the Swedenborg Society’s annual periodical featuring articles and reviews on contemporary events and books plus other cultural and literary activities.

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

1. Histories & Hauntings—Iain Sinclair with preliminary words from Stephen McNeilly. Iain Sinclair’s speech at the opening of a much-anticipated exhibition. With introduction from Stephen McNeilly.
2. Mud Knowledge: some aspects of Brian Catling’s Angels—Victor Rees. A study of the weird angelic forms across Catling’s artworks and books. Illustrated by artworks by Brian Catling.
3. Hans Ulrich Obrist asks, Does art bring Enlightenment?—Hans Ulrich Obrist. A review of the 2023 exhibition Tremulations, curated by Daniel Birnbaum & Jacqui Davies.
   
4. Ten Observations Provoked by Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life—Jarett Kobek. The author is inspired by Malick’s film of the life of Franz Jäggerstätter to look at what it means to be beatified in the twenty-first century.
   
5. Scattering My Mother’s Ashes—Colin Buttimer. Extracts from the photographer’s moving series, continued on pages 24-25 and 30 further on in the issue.
6. SWEDENBORG—Homero Aridjis translated by Betty Ferber. A new poem from the forthcoming expanded edition of An Angel Speaks.
   
7. Angels of Somnolence: H.D. and Swedenborg—Anya Reeve. An essay on the significant influence of Swedenborg upon the work of the Modernist writer H.D.
   
8. The Love of Self—Adam Skipper. A short story infused with Swedenborgian imagery. Illustrated with artworks by William Blake.
   
9. Houses—Kristin King. A memory-rich reflection upon the way different dwellings have impacted upon the author’s family.
   
10. And dust turns into shining gold: Emanuel Swedenborg’s last thirteen days on earth—Paola Russo. An extract from the author’s novel about the closing days of Emanuel Swedenborg’s life.
    
11. Peterloo and the Politics of Robert Hindmarsh—Andrew Hindmarsh. An essay on a Swedenborgian minister’s important witnessing of the Peterloo Massacre.
    
12. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner: 9 April 1848—Sue Young. The author investigates the guests of a dinner party held by J J G Wilkinson on the eve of the Chartist uprising in London in 1848.
    
13. ‘Pure Relationships’: Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian—Avery Curran. A review of the Tate Modern exhibition.
    
14. The Heavenly Realms—Ramsey Janini. A review of the Swedenborg Residency of Sam McLoughlin and David Chatton Barker.
    
15. Swedenborg Spotted!—Adam Skipper. Notice of an exhibition in Madrid.
16. Decorate with Swedenborg—James Wilson. A wallpaper design named after Swedenborg.
17. Auguries of Innocence: First Experiences with Letterpress book launch—Anya Reeve. A review of a memorable book launch and pop-up exhibition.
18. Profane Illumination—Live Drønen. A review of the exhibition Tremulations.
19. Blake and Swedenborg in Conversation: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell in performance at Swedenborg House—Sibylle Erle. A review of Inner Eye Productions’ adaptation of Blake.
20. Arcana coffee—Adam Skipper. An introduction to the new café at Swedenborg House.
21. A rekindling of flames that have guttered out—Timothy J Jarvis. A review of the performance Speak, Speak, I Listen: a performance in light and shadow.
22. The Blade and the Feather—Anya Reeve. A look into the work and stories behind the Histories & Hauntings exhibition.
23. Swedenborg Short Film Festival 2023—Sally O’Reilly. A look at the world of short film.
24. Bookshop—Adam Skipper. Some new titles available online and at Swedenborg House.

 

Author bios

HOMERO ARIDJIS won a scholarship from the Mexican Writers’ Center at the age of 19, and in 1964 was the youngest-ever recipient of the Xavier Villaurrutia Award for best book of the year. After two years in Europe on a Guggenheim fellowship, he served as ambassador to Switzerland and then The Netherlands while still in his thirties. Back in Mexico, in 1985 Aridjis and 99 other renowned artists and intellectuals founded the legendary Group of 100, an activist organization that addresses national and international environmental issues. Between 1997 and 2003 he served two terms as president of PEN International. He was Mexico’s ambassador to UNESCO from 2007 until 2010, and since then has lived in Mexico City. Aridjis has published 51 volumes of poetry, fiction, children’s books, essays, and plays. His work has been translated into twenty languages and recognized with literary prizes such as the Grinzane Cavour (Italy), the Prix Roger-Caillois (France), the Smederevo Golden Key, three international poetry prizes in Italy and the Griffin Poetry Prize (Canada). Recent books in English translation include The Child Poet (2016), News of the Earth (2017), Maria the Monarch (2017), Smyrna in Flames (2021) and Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence (2023).

DAVID CHATTON BARKER is an artist and co-founder of Folklore Tapes.

DANIEL BIRNBAUM is a curator, art critic and former Director of Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

WILLIAM BLAKE was an artist, printmaker and poet.

ANONYMOUS BOSCH is a photographer, filmmaker and artist.

COLIN BUTTIMER makes one-off books and other work which often use images captured with cameras. More: www.eleventhvolume.com.

RICHARD CARLILE was a radical journalist and publisher.

BRIAN CATLING was an artist, performer, author and poet.

AVERY CURRAN is a writer and researcher based in London. She completed an MA in Victorian Studies at Birkbeck, and is midway through a Ph.D. on queerness in nineteenth-century spiritualism, also at Birkbeck. Her debut novel, Spoiled Milk, will be published in Spring 2026 by riverrun in the UK.

JACQUI DAVIES is a film producer, curator and the Director of the production company Primitive Film.

LIVE DRØNEN is a writer and curator based in Oslo. She is currently Assistant Curator at the Kistefos Museum. In 2023-24, she held the position as Interim Artistic Director at UKS (Young Artists’ Society), Oslo. Her writing has appeared in outlets such as Kunstkritikk, Texte zur Kunst and Artforum, as well as several exhibition catalogues and publications.

SIBYLLE ERLE is Visiting Scholar at University of Lincoln and the author of Blake, Lavater and Physiognomy (2010). She is co-editor of The Reception of William Blake in Europe (2019) and Monsters: Interdisciplinary Explorations in Monstrosity (2019-20). She is editor of Blake in Europe (2022) and VALA, journal of the Blake Society; and she was co-curator of Blake and Physiognomy (2010-11) at Tate Britain.

BETTY FERBER is a translator.

XIAOXUAN HAN is an animation director.

ANDREW HINDMARSH is a recently retired university administrator. While he originally trained as a zoologist, he has had a long-standing interest in the social history of his family, particularly the Hindmarshes of Alnwick. He first started investigating things Swedenborgian when he realized that Robert Hindmarsh was his first cousin six times removed and his only relative to appear in the Dictionary of National Biography.

RAMSEY JANINI is an artist based in Todmorden, West Yorkshire. He studied history at the University of Manchester, where he researched the intersections between Victorian sound recording and re-imaginings of technology, seance, voice and culture. His recent creative work is best summarized by visiting @ramseyjanini on Linktree, or www.folkloretapes.co.uk, where all these artists continue to collaborate.

TIMOTHY J JARVIS is a writer with an interest in the antic, the weird, and the strange. His cult ‘last man’ novel, The Wanderer, was first released in 2014 by Perfect Edge and republished in a new edition by Zagava in 2022, and a collection of short fiction, Treatises on Dust, was published by Swan River Press in 2023.

NICHOLAS JEEVES is a lecturer in graphic design and an editor.

WILLIAM EDWARD KILBURN was a photographer and maker of daguerreotypes.

KRISTIN KING is a professor emerita of English and Communications at Bryn Athyn College in Pennsylvania. Her research interests and publications range from work on Henry James, to studies of gardening as spiritual expression, to explorations of twentieth- and twenty-first-century novels and the ancient concept of wisdom-through-suffering. She studies digital literacies and is fascinated by the ways—both fruitful and unsettling—that an online world affects the ways we read and the stories we tell.

HILMA AF KLINT was a Swedish artist and mystic and a founding member of De Fem.

JARETT KOBEK is a bestselling Turkish-American writer who lives in California. His previous books include ATTA, I Hate the Internet, Only Americans Burn in Hell, The Future Won’t Be Long and Do Every Thing Wrong!: XXXTentacion Against the World. In 2022 he quite possibly solved the case of the identity of the notorious Zodiac killer, as outlined in his books Motor Spirit: The Long Hunt for the Zodiac and How to Find Zodiac.

MARK LECKEY is a Turner Prize-winning artist.

SIÔN MARSHALL-WATERS is a filmmaker.

SAM MCLOUGHLIN is an artist and cofounder of Folklore Tapes.

STEPHEN MCNEILLY is the Executive and Museum Director of the Swedenborg Society.

PIET MONDRIAN was a Dutch painter.

HANS ULRICH OBRIST is the artistic director of Serpentine, London.

SALLY O’REILLY writes for performance, page and video. Recent projects include: Margaret Calvert Drives Out, lyrics and video for Bas Jan (Fire Records, 2024) and Where They Gather, a spoken word and music album with Kit Downes (October House Records, 2022). Works of fiction include Help in Cucumbers (Joan, 2023), The Ambivalents (Cabinet, 2017), and Crude (Eros, 2016). For more information, visit www.sallyoreilly.org.uk.

VICTOR REES is a writer and academic based in London. He is currently researching a Ph.D. at UCL on the novels and performance art of Brian Catling. Some of his work can be found at victorrees.com.

ANYA REEVE is a publishing, gallery and events assistant at the Swedenborg Society. Anya has lately acted as Assistant Curator on the two-phase exhibition Swedenborg’s Lusthus (2024). Previously, she was the exhibition assistant for Pariah Genius (2024) and the exhibition assistant and Assistant Editor for the Histories & Hauntings project (Renchi Bicknell, Brian Catling, Iain Sinclair et al.; 2023). Prior to joining the Society, Anya completed a BA in English Language and Literature and an MSt in Literature 1900-Present at the University of Oxford. Her creative writing has appeared in print in Snow lit rev, no. 12-12 1/2 (autumn 2023), and digitally in The Rumen journal and Blumenhaus Magazine. Further short fiction works are upcoming in two publications, one edited by Iain Sinclair. Essays in The Modernist Review and the Oxonian Review.

PAOLA RUSSO is a Swedish writer who is the author of more than ten books in Sweden, including the novels En säck full av Gud (2009) and Den baltiska stjärnan (2024). Paola’s interest in Swedenborg stems back to her high school years when she wrote an essay on his Dream Diary. Her favourite Swedenborg work is Arcana Coelestia.

IAIN SINCLAIR is considered one of London’s greatest chroniclers. Iain’s early work consisted mostly of poetry which he published on his own small press, Albion Village Press. His novels include Downriver (winner of the James Tait Black Prize and the Encore Prize) and Dining on Stones (shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize). Non-fiction books, exploring the myth and matter of London, include Lights Out for the Territory, London Orbital and Ghost Milk: Calling Time on the Grand Project. For the Swedenborg Society he has written Blake’s London: The Topographic Sublime (2011); Swimming to Heaven: The Lost Rivers of London (2013); and (with Brian Catling) Several Clouds Colliding (2012).

ADAM SKIPPER is a writer of novels and short stories. When he isn’t working in the basement of a—not-so-secret—publishing society, he likes to find inspiration in art and theology.

BEN WICKEY is an artist, writer, and animator from Cape Ann, Massachusetts. His illustrations can be found in such books as Ki Longfellow’s The Illustrated Vivian Stanshall and Alan Moore and Steve Moore’s The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic.

JAMES WILSON is a writer and editor.

SUE YOUNG is a writer, historian and founder of the Dandelion Club of Homeopathic History, whose books include The Lost Book of History and Three Lost Books of Healing. Over 1000 biographical articles by Sue Young, on figures influential in the history of homoeopathy, can be found at the website of the Hahnemann House Trust.