Curated by Stine Nielsen Ljungdalh
Founded in 1634 with the alchemical ‘union’ of Sir Nicolas and the legendary Lady Marianne – also named The Bull – the esoteric Hunting Society has remained, up to the present, undisclosed to the public eye. For The Hunters of the Invisible by Charlotte Bergson, the viewer is invited to glimpse into a parallel blueprint of creation. The exhibition forms a dialogue between objects kindly loaned by the Hunting Society and new work by the artist resulting from archival research recently undertaken during a residency at the Hunting Society Collection.
Known as a feminist artist and documentary filmmaker, Swedish/Danish born Charlotte Bergson has an ongoing interest in alchemy and not least in the work of Mr T. Smith. Also known as The Hunter of the Invisible, Smith’s work consisted of letters, experiments and notes found in a hidden attic chamber in Copenhagen; all ‘interpretations’ of the now missing alchemical manuscript The Saga of the Event. Written by Lady Marianne, the manuscript is the spiritual framework behind the Hunting Society’s ideological approach to the origin of creation, which may explain why the Hunting Society’s Archive holds the largest collection of Smith’s work.
Stine Nielsen Ljungdalh (b.1969) is a research candidate at the Contemporary Art Research Centre, Kingston University. Her practice centres on meta-fiction as a method for addressing different notions of the event, using perspectives from philosophy, science and alchemy. Her method involves the ongoing creation of a parallel world called The Zone; an alchemical theatre inhabited by fictional personas and organisations. Previous curatorial collaborations include Other Fictions at Photographic Centre (2013) and GamingGaming at New Shelter Plan (2014) both in Copenhagen.
