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Psychic art on a massive scale
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 LONDON and DUBLIN. The creative outpourings of mediumistic artist Madge Gill (1884-1961) were tremendous. Living in London’s East End, she rarely sold her intricate, obsessive works, insisting that they belonged to her spirit guide Myminerest.
But she occasionally exhibited her work at amateur art exhibitions and the Whitechapel Gallery, London, was one of the venues that displayed her work during her lifetime. In June, it had a room devoted to her work as part of its “Inner Worlds Outside” exhibition, which focuses on what is known as Outsider Art (or Art Brut) produced by individuals from the “fringes of society”. These are defined in a press release as including “psychiatric patients, criminal offenders, self-taught visionaries, mediums and other ‘eccentric’ individuals”.
The purpose of the exhibition is to show the impact of little known outsiders on some of the greatest artists of the 20th century, such as Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, the Expressionists and the Surrealists.
Madge Gill had a traumatic childhood, having been born in London to an unmarried mother. At the age of nine she was placed in an orphanage and subsequently sent to Canada as a farm servant. Returning to London at the age of 19, she lived with an aunt who introduced her to Spiritualism.
Her discovery of drawing is said to have been a direct result of her attempts to contact the spirits of one of her sons, who died in the 1918 influenza epidemic, and a daughter who died at birth a year later.
 Gill’s work ranged from postcards, which she produced one after another, sometimes in all-night drawing sessions, while in bed, to immense coloured drawings produced on rolls of calico, executed incrementally. These were often 30 feet long and one of them is on show at the Whitechapel Gallery.
Her work is now represented in the Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne, The Outsider Archive, London, and the Newham Collection.
The exhibition ran until 25 June (www.whitechapel.org) and will move to the Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, from 12 July to 15 October (www.modernart.ie).
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Posted on Monday, September 04, 2006
Category: Paranormal
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