Earlier this week I was privileged to watch a sneaky advance screening of Armageddon Gospels. Armageddon Gospels from Foolish People is a new film written and directed by John Harrigan, in which a group of refugee gods, transposed to flesh and blood, attempt to enact a ritual to save England…
Yesterday I posed a question on Twitter as a short thread that I’ll reformat here for easy reading: I’m trying to put together a vague explanation for the increased use—by artists (such as myself), writers, musicians, filmmakers, etc—of a particular view of Britain that is simultaneously…
Read the rest of “Notes on re-enchantment as resistance in Deep England”…
Note: An extended version of this blog post is available in my book of artwork England’s Dark Dreaming, available to order from our online shop. On some days, when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest, it is said that you can glimpse the mythical land of Deep England, particularly if…
Shortly before Christmas David Southwell (he of Hookland Guide fame) and I met up for a few festive beers in London. We spoke about many things, but one topic that has been buzzing around my head since is about nomenclature for the creative things we are both working on. We’d previously…
Read the rest of “Re-enchantment, Metaphoric Density, and Deep Myth”…
I’ve now finished the first 5 of my England’s Dark Dreaming series of drawings. I wish I could show you them at their full size—one metre high—rather than the relatively small digital photographs of them, because the physical scale of a piece of artwork affects your reaction to it. Having…
I'm increasingly convinced that the country is temporally fractured, and we should be expecting a visit from Sapphire & Steel any time now. Everything seems to operate on skewed oneiric logic. Everyone is reduced to ill-disguised cyphers, woodenly acting roles and reciting lines. The series of…
A few days ago on Twitter I was thinking out loud about the film The Witch, which I watched on Saturday evening, specifically about its relationship to the theme of Folk Horror which is getting some interesting attention recently. Folk Horror seems to be a nebulous concept to define, even though…
Over on Twitter yesterday I posted a series of tweets that, merged together, went something like this: What I need is Brighton people who will dress up in masks like those in the photo [above] and these, and be filmed doing some sort of dark folk-horror dance/performance art/ritual. Performers…
As I’ve been developing a body of artwork about myth and masked mythic characters over the past few years my thought process has frequently been drawn to the concept of ritual. Not everyday rituals like shaking someone’s hand as a greeting, but those rituals probably better described as…
It’s been a busy few months, and I realise I haven’t been blogging as frequently as last year. The main reasons for this is that I’ve been doing a lot more artwork (such as the drawing above - the full piece can be found here) as well as all the admin work that comes with publishing a…