Not Without My Ghosts: The Artist As Medium

A Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition of artists and works inspired by mediumistic methodologies and their deep cultural history

Bringing together more than 30 international artists and collectives from the 19th century to the present day

Not Without My Ghosts explores the changing terms of artistic engagement with mediumship.

The exhibition takes in works based on spirit experiences performed in a state of trance, practices of automatism, surrealist experiments, ritualised forms of occultism, and communications with higher powers and other realities. 

As these creative practices challenged traditional forms of art, religion and politics, and were often associated with female artists, the exhibition also considers spirit art and the mediumistic in relation to the history of feminism over the last two centuries.

Not Without My Ghosts is a Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition, developed in partnership with Drawing Room, London, and curated by Lars Bang Larsen, Simon Grant and Marco Pasi, with Jacqui McIntosh at The Drawing Room and Gilly Fox for Hayward Touring.

Exhibition venues

This exhibition toured to the following venues:

• 10 Sep – 1 Nov: 2020: Drawing Room, London

• 15 Oct – 11 Dec 2021: Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool

• 8 Jan – 13 Mar 2022: Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea 

• 26 Mar – 26 Jun 2022: Millennium Gallery, Sheffield