Oddcast episode

October 30, 2024

Judith Noble on Magic and Artistic Practice

A House with Many Rooms Interview 3

In this interview we speak with Judith Noble – visual artist, film-maker, Professor of Film and the Occult at Plymouth Arts University, and all-around woman of parts – about artistic practice and its many intersections with magic.

We discuss:

• An ‘enchanted turn’ currently underway on many levels in the world of fine art,
• Judith’s own artistic practice, wherein a number of landscape-based and other spirits are collaborators in creating curious multimedia productions (some of which can be perused in the gallery below),
• The fringes of Surrealism, and how that’s historically where the surreal action really was,
• The role gender-bias has played in the ‘art world’, and how that relates to magic-bias,
• The importance of form, but also the importance (for magic) of the artists’ formal intentions being subverted (taking Kenneth Anger’s films as a case-study).

Interview Bio:

Judith Noble is Professor of Film and the Occult at Arts University Plymouth (UK), and an artist for whom the practice of magic is central to the work. She began her career as an artist filmmaker, exhibiting work internationally (including Water Into Wine, 1980 and Sea Dreams, 1981) and worked for over twenty years in the film industry, before returning to academic research and art practice. Her current research centres on artists’ moving image, Surrealism, the occult and work by women artists, and she has published on filmmakers including Maya Deren, Derek Jarman and Kenneth Anger. Her most recent publications are: “Convocation of Theurgists – Kenneth Anger’s Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome and West Coast Occulture” in Sci-Fi, Magick, Queer LA, (eds Johnson and Filreis, 2024, Inventory Press) and The Dance of Moon and Sun – Ithell Colquhoun, British Women and Surrealism (editor, 2023, Fulgur). Her continuing practice as an artist includes text+image, artist’s book and mixed media/textile pieces created through trance work, spirit possession and interaction with the more than human. Her most recent film is Fire Spells (2022), a collaboration with director Tom Chick. Her current work can be found at www.iseu.space, and her artist’s books at fieldsystem.co.uk. Her earlier film work is distributed by Cinenova.

Works Cited in this Episode:

The 2018 Ithell Colquhoun symposium at Arts University Plymouth , which has now resulted in a fine publication from Fulgur Press.

The Colquhoun retrospective Ithell Colquhoun: Between Worlds, is set to run 1 Feb. – 5 May 2025 at the Tate St. Ives.

The Inner Space Exploration Unit.

Owen Davies. Grimoires: A History of Magic Books. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009.

Maya Deren. Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. Thames & Hudson, London/New York, NY, 1953.

Penny Slinger’s website.

Gallery:

 

 

 

 

Themes

Austin Osman Spare, House with Many Rooms, Interview, Ithell Colquhoun, Kenneth Anger, Leonora Carrington, Magic, Max Ernst, Maya Deren, Remedios Varo, Situationism, Surrealism, William Blake