Image: Tony Albert, Pay Attention MOFO!, 2019. Glycee print and screen print with unique hand stencil. Courtesy of the artist and Sullivan & Strumpf.
Stephen J. King [Shiva] the Australian National Grand Master General ad vitam of the co-fraternal Thelemic Order, Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), writes on ‘Confessions’ an art installation by Tony Albert presented in partnership with ‘Dark Mofo’ 2019 at ‘Contemporary Art Tasmania’.
NIGREDO 2019: “For now we see through a glass, darkly.”
“Bless me Father, for I have sinned…”.
Freud focussed on that guilt aspect. For him, confession was symptomatic of an infantile obsessive neurosis stemming from Oedipal conflict with the father. The Confessional is a dark place where lurk the hidden sexual desires of the confessor to possess the mother; a place of guilt in killing the totemic Father, all the while exalting him so as to obsess all over again. Jung, while ambivalent about the form (neurosis) was more interested in the content (numinous). What gets brought up in the confessional exchange? He saw it as a universal tendency towards spirituality, an archetype of the collective unconscious – of the Imago Dei – the storehouse of religious motifs and content. The process of guilt and forgiveness was age old and universal, a process of equilibrating to the transpersonal Self – normal and healthy. You could call that making the forgiving and balancing Unconscious, conscious. A dark and conscious night – fear, melancholia, guilt – before a redemptive golden dawn. “But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings;” Mal: 4:2……
Stephen J King is a leading authority on the British mystic, magician, poet and philosopher, Aleister Crowley. He regularly lectures internationally on Crowley’s system of “Magick,” initiatic Orders, and the revealed religious and scriptural tradition of Thelema. Stephen is presently editing Crowley’s last book, Magick Without Tears, for the Crowley estate. Under his religious name “Shiva,” Stephen is the Australian National Grand Master General ad vitam of the co-fraternal Thelemic Order, Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), once led by Crowley, and Presiding Bishop of its Gnostic Catholic Church. Professionally, he is a leading thinker and operative in the emerging fields of human-centred and experience design. He has interests in philosophy, transpersonal psychology, theology, liturgy, the history of ideas, comparative religion, apocalyptic literature, angelic magic and bio-energetics.
07-Jun-2019 – 14-Jul-2019
Confessions
TONY ALBERT
OPENING: 6pm, Thursday 6 June 2019
EXHIBITION: 7 June – 14 July 2019*
LOCATION: Contemporary Art Tasmania
A FREE EVENT
The artist will be present to take confessions daily from 7 June – 14 June, 2pm – 4pm.
The exhibition will be open 12 – 5pm daily during Dark Mofo, then 12 – 5pm Wednesdays – Sundays until Sunday 14 July.
Confessions, Tony Albert’s solo presentation during Dark Mofo, represents the Girramay/Kuka Yalanji artist’s first engagement with the idea of performance and is a starting point from which to examine the potentialities of non-verbal communication.
This exhibition presents new commissions and iconic works from the last ten years. The installation includes a confession-style booth within which Albert engages non-verbally with one member of the public at a time. Via a single sheet of paper, the artist and participant exchange hand-drawn marks in a form of abstract conversation. The unique experience between artist and visitor will result in an artwork made in collaboration. Confessions explores the artist’s experience of growing up within the Catholic Church and living with the contemporary legacies of colonialism.
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