The Alchemical Sisters are a new artist collective, having their first exhibition, Dumb Supper, at ArtWorks Project Space, Blackhorse Lane.
The first Private View is on Friday, 30th October, from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm at Barbican Arts Group Trust Project Space, 114a Blackhorse Lane, Walthamstow.
The show continues on Saturday, 31st October and Sunday, 1st November, from 12:00 pm to 4:00 pm.
This exhibition presents an invitation to cross the threshold between the living and the dead…
A Dumb Supper is an ancient ritual of remembrance and communion with the beloved dead, traditionally held at the time of year when the veil between this world and the next is believed to be at its thinnest.
Bringing together nine artists whose practices encompass painting, photography, performance, installation, mythology and the mysterious, Dumb Supper explores the boundaries between presence and absence, memory and imagination, the material and the supernatural.
Together, they invite us to consider what remains, what is remembered, and what might exist beyond the visible world.
The Sisters
The Alchemical Sisters are Ruth Calland, Andrea G Artz, Donna McLean, Sarah Sparkes, Francesca Alaimo, Ruth Philo, Noga Shatz, Selma Mäkelä and Avis Underwood. A Dumb Supper is an ancient ritual of remembrance and communion with the beloved dead, traditionally held at the time of year when the veil between this world and the next is believed to be at its thinnest.
Is everyone ready?
The candles all lit?
Are the mirrors all dark?
Then at the dumb supper let's sit.
A Ritual for Halloween
As Halloween draws near, and the veil between the living and the dead is thinned, psychic connections become stronger. The Alchemical Sisters, a group of nine female and non-binary artists brought together by Ruth Calland at the beginning of the year, have chosen this time to sit down and honour the dead and departed, documenting their dumb supper ritual and sharing it with a wider audience, along with a carefully curated selection of their occult and mystical works.
Alchemy and the Feminine
Carl Jung viewed alchemy not as primitive chemistry, for turning lead into gold, but as a projection of the unconscious individuation process, where the feminine principle is represented by the hidden soul (anima) and the transformative matrix (prima materia) required to unite opposites. The authenticity and humanity of women are celebrated in the occult, where they are allowed to be wild and emotional without being labelled ‘hysterical’. Historical alchemists often worked alongside a female adept, known as the soror mystica, or mystical sister. However, we know that female alchemists also existed in their own right, hence the Alchemical Sisters.
Historically, the ‘witch’ or ‘occult practitioner’ was a transgressive figure persecuted by patriarchal authority. Today, a new generation of female and queer curators is using the occult to create an alternative value system that operates outside of conventional, masculine art canons.
The art critic Waldemar Januszczak notes:
The art world has developed a passion for witchery, the occult, tarot, all forms of hocus-pocus … Up and down today’s art world, on all its levels, we are watching a retreat from reason and a stampede towards unreason … A big cause, probably the biggest, is that occult fantasies can be reshaped easily into attacks on the true enemy here: the patriarchy.
But perhaps the occult simply gives us a language for what rational culture has learned to ignore: intuition, ambiguity, ritual, symbols and the unseen. Perhaps we are not finding something new at all, but recovering ancient feminine principles. Art has always lived close to that threshold, and, as the artist Paul Klee noted:
Art doesn't reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.
The Alchemical Sisters are interested in the transformational, mystery, magic and healing, and the collective unconscious. Here, in Dumb Supper, they open portals to another realm, honouring and making visible our connection with ongoing ancestral presence.
To honour the dead
of the previous year,
a communion of love,
and of peace, but not fear.
for each we have lost
we set a place,
for the veil is so thin,
with their presence we're graced.
Silent we listen,
for the hearts we love best,
and so we do honour
to those who've gone West.
References
1. From The Dumb Supper by Lazarus Merlinus, allpoetry.com/poem/2295744-The-Dumb-Supper-by-Lazarus-Merlinus
2. Waldemar Januszczak, Art’s sudden obsession with tarot, magic and the occult, 24 February 2025, waldemar.tv/2025/02/arts-sudden-obsession-with-tarot-magic-and-the-occult/
3. The Dumb Supper, op. cit.
4. Ruth Calland, personal correspondence.
