Ongoing Correspondence
by Hannah Singleton
The materials on show here are produced in response to researching the records of Theodora Bosanquet’s experiments with automatic writing and mediumship from 1933-1940s, part of the Society for Psychical Research’s archive at Cambridge University.
I have reworked symbols and text that I found within the archive, using these as a means to mirror the gestures Bosanquet originally performed. Sewing and adapting the mark making process allowed me to spend longer in the process, spirals speaking to a temporal loop and tradition of feminist esoteric and artistic use of this symbol.
These works track the time spent with the archive and the legacy of Bosanquet. A body of what I think of as traces began to build in parallel to the original archive; these are not intended to be displayed as individual artworks at this stage, but to document a dialogue with the archive and Bosanquet herself.
Biography
Hannah Singleton is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Art and Performance within Manchester School of Art and Design. Her recent work explores séance in contemporary art practice and archives of mediumship, and the legacy of the Pendle Witches through the analysis of material culture, artworks and landscape. Her writing in development connects mythology, craft and place by exploring fictional historical narratives in contemporary art. Her PhD research explored the physical and immaterial traces of performance and temporal artworks through alternative and artistic archival approaches. She is a member of the Dark Arts Research Kollective (DVRK) at MMU, alongside affiliate membership of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies research group.
