Magic in contemporary art

My practice-led research explores magic in contemporary art and my interest in this topic emerges from a sustained exposure to multiple and often completing systems of belief. My adult life has been spent in Sydney’s inner-west where I have encountered magical subcultures linked to the Western mystery tradition. I was raised in the rural west of Ireland where the dominant Roman Catholic religion is tinged with vernacular folklore and fairy traditions, which often hint at older cosmologies. Of significant influence is the Irish Otherworld, a realm accessible to humans only through dreams and visions, and an encounter with this world is often difficult to articulate using rational terms.

During my BFA I researched Leonora Carrington and Ithell Colquhoun as their magical interests intersected with historical Surrealism and Celtic folklore. My MFA research focused on the National Art School’s historical connection to Rosaleen Norton (1917-1979) and this shared institutional history prompted my investigation into the relationship between artistic practice and the transmission of magical ideas across generations. Norton’s artistic legacy has international appeal as she was exhibited alongside Carrington and Colquhoun in London in 2025 (link). Norton’s contributions to Australian culture is overdue a reconsideration and part of my research is an attempt to recontextualise her for the contemporary. In my own practice, I adapt Norton’s understanding of painting and magic as operative modes in which images function as active agents rather than representations.

Rather than presenting a fixed image or narrative, the surfaces of my paintings are built through a slow process using techniques of layering and revision. My MFA body of work developed a painting method that activates ideas linked to colour theory and perception. I use a limited colour palette of red and blue as this combination is a symbolic pairing with long art historical associations and allows for the exploration of perception as an active process. I employ the colour purple as the main element in my image construction, as purple does not exist as a single wavelength of light but emerges through the brain’s integration of visual information. I link this perceptual phenomenon to magic as the figurative elements used in my paintings are adapted from the Rider-Waite tarot deck (c.1910). I employ the tarot as a form of image archive to engage with the social process of occulture, where knowledge and practices associated with esotericism become detached from their original context, instead being circulated and remixed in popular culture. By translating tarot imagery into painting, I remove them from their original context and they are reconfigured through my painterly processes.

The combination of remixed tarot imagery and my slow method leads to finished works that are atmospheric and symbolically charged, offering ambiguity over resolution and keeping perception in a state of continual formation.