Opening Night: Visionary Landscapes

About this event

Join us for the opening of a new exhibition exploring landscape as an internal, as well as external, state. Thursday 1 October 2026 6pm-9pm Swedenborg House Gallery Free (booking required) Swedenborg House is pleased to announce Visionary Landscapes, an exhibition exploring the relationship between landscape, imagination and visionary states. Curated by Museum Director Stephen McNeilly, the exhibition brings together historic works in dialogue with contemporary paintings, photography and film. Organized, in part, to showcase new acquisitions into the Swedenborg Collection, including works by William Blake, F H Evans and Francis Oliver Finch, the exhibition draws together key works from contemporary and historical artists including surrealist painter Malcolm de Chazal, occultist Austin Osman Spare, filmmaker Andrew Kötting, musician Jem Finer, photographer Jason Orton, psychogeographer Iain Sinclair, and writer Alice Albinia amongst others. Drawing on questions of representation, correspondences, climate, environment, memory and place, the exhibition invites us to re-evaluate landscape as an internal state and asks us to view nature itself as a threshold between visible and invisible realms. The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of public events, screenings and a book launch. 'According to Swedenborg, Blake, Finch and others, the landscape of consciousness has its own laws which are no less objective and binding than the laws of nature,’ says the curator, Stephen McNeilly. ‘This exhibition explores this idea, and the various ways in which our representations of landscape give rise to the threshold between inner and outer states.’ INCLUDING WORKS BY Alice Albinia, William Blake, Colin Buttimer, Heather Cartwright, Malcolm de Chazal, Edward Chell, F H Evans, Francis Oliver Finch, Stephen Gill, Dean Kenning, Uta Kögelsberger, Andrew Kötting/Jem Finer, Jock McFadyen, Jason Orton, Mark Riley, Iain Sinclair, Austin Osman Spare, plus items from the Swedenborg Collection. CURATED BY STEPHEN MCNEILLY is the Museum Director at Swedenborg House. He has curated numerous exhibitions and events including Elective Affinities (2025-6) and Swedenborg's Lusthus: On Memory and Place (2024).