Language of the Birds: Occult and Art considers over 60 modern and contemporary artists who have each expressed their own engagement with magical practice. Beginning with Aleister Crowley’s tarot paintings and Austin Osman Spare’s automatic drawings of the 1920s, the exhibition traces nearly a century of occult art, including Leonora Carrington and Kurt Seligmann’s surrealist explorations, Kenneth Anger and Ira Cohen’s ritualistic experiments in film and photography, and the mystical probings of contemporary visionaries such as Francesco Clemente, Kiki Smith, Paul Laffoley, BREYER P-ORRIDGE, and Carol Bove.

The exhibition takes its name from the historical and cross-cultural notion that there is a magic language via which only the initiated can communicate. Often referred to as the “language of the birds,” it is a system rumoured to operate in symbols, and to be a vehicle for revealing hidden truths and igniting metamorphic sparks.