Anna Pogossova
... a call from the centre of things
May 3 - June 7, 2024
…a call from the centre of things is a space where mental contemplation and revelation become possible. The physical walls of the gallery become a psychic perimeter for a number of interconnected thoughts, conflating the spiritual with the technological. The work positions artist as a medium, and speaks to our enduring relationship with chance and magical thinking in relation to identity, autonomy, labour, and intent. AI is utilised as an oracular device – a modern magic mirror - with the artist’s role shifting between conduit and author, in a pattern of abandoning and reclaiming her agency.
The seeds of ...a call from the centre of things began from Pogossova reading the works and mysteries of two prominent female Medieval mystics: Hildegard von Bingen’s invented language, Lingua Ignota, which she attributed to divine revelation, and Julian of Norwich’s "Revelations of Divine Love." Both women were anchoresses, serving as significant conduits for divine communication, and their messages were revered within the church as direct encounters with God.
The physical dimensions of the gallery space mirror those of an anchoress' cell in a monastery, much like the room where Hildegard von Bingen received her divine visions. These intentional proportions suggest that by constraining one’s physical space and narrowing one’s sensory experiences, can create an environment more conducive to receiving divine messages. As a result, the gallery space is intended for viewers to allow their minds to wander and be drawn to specific elements within the space. Akin to tarot, ouija or alchemy and other forms of familiar practices of divination and astrology, the room presents aids for psychic navigation guiding the participant to engage in a form of interpretive divination.
Even the seemingly secular paradigm of technology remains susceptible to spiritual and supernatural leaks. Its boundaries are porous at the edges of the known and intentional; there is a glitch, aberration, error, and contingency, which hints at underlying will or intent. This phenomenon is what interests Pogossova. In both the artist's practice and thinking, lattices of hyper-connection in the modern world can inhabit the same realm of the sublime as magic.
Installation Views
About the Artist
Anna Pogossova is a photomedia artist and sculptor, whose work is concerned with the mythologies of objects, meaning-making, and contemporary spiritualism. Growing up in Russia in the 1980’s and 1990’s Pogossova witnessed a shift towards pseudo-science, the occult, and parapsychology, while other belief systems were simultaneously still in play. This resulted in a personal curiosity and openness within a landscape which allowed deep superstition and folk beliefs to coexist with science and cosmism.
Informed by popular iconographies, Pogossova fabricates imagined objects and spaces, which facilitate performance of fictional narratives as real lived experience. Her practice explores the way cultural references can authorise belief, trigger interpretations, and habituated ways of seeing.