Art and the Imagination

Blog readers may be interested in one or other of the following two events.

First, a premiere screening of Thou Art, a film on community outsider art practice produced in partnership with the Bethlem Gallery, will take place at Tate Modern on Friday 10 June at 2.30pm. It will be followed by a panel discussion on the status of outsider art, with opportunity for audience participation.

Second, the Royal College of Art's conference entitled Imagining Imagination will take place in London on 10-11 June. Readers may remember Phantasmagoria, a temporary exhibition curated last year for the Bethlem Gallery which featured artworks created as part of a series of deliberate experiments at the Maudsley Hospital in the 1930s into the hallucinogenic effects of the drug mescaline. If so, they will be interested to know that the conference will feature a paper comparing and contrasting these works with the output of contemporary artists whose unforced visionary experiences have formed part of their creative subject matter. This paper will be co-presented by the Gallery Co-ordinator, who will be doing her best to be in two places at one time, as she is also involved in the event at Tate Modern!