Invoking Belial Collection
Wednesday 2 April 2025
TLDR
33 hand-painted works inspired by medieval woodcuts, exploring the occult as a long-standing sanctuary for the dispossessed, the disabled, and the disfranchised
The Little Witch moves through the collection gathering with entities older than memory in spaces the mainstream refuses to occupy
Grounded in personal experience and occult history, these works propose that belonging has always been found in the places that society's closed doors never reach
Invoking Belial is a collection of 33 hand-painted works inspired by the visual language of medieval woodcuts: dense, symbolic, morally complex. Working in gouache on cotton rag, I set out to make the ephemeral visible: to explore something I've long believed: that the occult has always welcomed those the mainstream turns away. The dispossessed, the disabled, the disfranchised. The ones society has no comfortable category for. This collection is built on that history.
A recurring figure moves through the collection: the Little Witch is the thread connecting the works, appearing in ritual gatherings, in astral flight, in direct encounter with entities older than memory. In Who and Church, the cast-aside gather alongside devil-like figures to dance and socialise; belonging rendered as ritual, community found in the spaces the respectable world refuses to occupy.
The collection draws equally on personal experience and on the long tradition of the occult as sanctuary. I wanted to make visible what that sanctuary actually looks like: not horror, not fantasy, but a genuine alternative to the mainstream's closed doors. Demons, in this collection, don't wait for an invitation. They find a Side Door. And sometimes, as in Between Us, two figures simply step toward each other. No salt lines, no spiritual combat: what others might call possession, I call presence.
Red Gate sits at the collection's most confronting edge. Drawing from Hans von Gersdorff's historical wound-man woodcut, it reimagines the Prince of Torment as a figure whose wounds are maps of entry rather than damage: desire as will, the gate opening in recognition rather than by force. Seen takes a different turn entirely, grounded in something that actually happened: on Eddy Avenue in Sydney in May 2015, I watched a Transit Thing stumble across three lanes of peak hour traffic and disappear into thin air.
Each of the 33 pieces is a portal and a witness. I hope viewers come away with a different sense of what the occult holds and who has always found shelter there. Collect evidence that other worlds have never been silent.
33 pieces. (Not yet) Minted on objkt.com.
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