On The Swedenborg Society’s Elective Affinities Exhibition
20-21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2 TH
18th September 2025 – 27 February 2026
Curated by Stephen McNeilly.
i:
CAP AND CARE
Under his eponymous cap, Swedenborgan in Chief,
Stephen McNeilly expresses craft and care through curation;
With a century in the house spilling under the Swedenborg
Society roof and through its multifarious rooms,
From Wynter at the top to classical hall at street level;
Magic made through depictions of other realms and worlds.
Here’s the proof. Entering Swedenborg house is always
An act of time travel as the celebrated sage who begat it,
And for whom honour is housed can still speak
Through its exhibitions, events, and under President
Iain Sinclair, close connections. The dead still walk
Through it, from the sadly distanced Brian Catling
To Emmanuel himself; Stephen’s peak
Points towards all who held such immaculate office.
His Elective Affinities exhibition is a vote for the soul
Sheened on teak, including a mounted table display
Of each of Sinclair’s Wheat Geometry Axioms, prose poem
Pages as tablet gleam glazed by glass to make screeds
Which seem holy in here, as Eden and Andew Kotting’s
Tell Tale Heads, bob before them, gossiping their own
Language as dusk like a spell spreads and feeds.
Everywhere you look, sight is cast as if by ES, or all
Who commune with strange spirits, from the set
For The Quay Brothers Street of Crocodiles animation,
Which is a world in one room, to Dean Kenning’s
Crawlers, beneath: two Kinetic but stripped turtle
Sculptures survey the scene, eyeless, eager to navigate
Naked gloom. But the elective affinities cultivate too,
As each piece forms part of a pairing: from Sinclair’s
Glassed poems to Unknown’s 12 Axioms towards a
philosophy of the possible prints found downstairs
Inside the Gallery space, which still feels like someone’s
Home. Here is hosting. And ghosting too in the true sense,
As Leanora Carrington’s prints and drawings reveal her
Particular magic of mind and full flair. From T E Lawrence’s
Signed copy of Heaven and Hell, to the silver inkstand
Of John Flaxman; from Blake’s Eastcheap autograph book,
Everywhere you look so astounds; from Breton’s Surrealisme
Manifeste, to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Tulk letter;
Art through artefact elevating not only the prize
Of possession, but the rewards of curation, and what
Through observation alone can be found. In the bookshop,
Buffet a swoop of Sinclair, Wynd and Catling; Gifts
Returned by the River, more Kenning, Lustus, with lines
Led and looping as with Hawksmoor’s famed church connect.
And so many fascinating people come here, (including
The Brothers Quay as I walked through) striving not for style
But for substance. Unlike most gallery groupings, where people
Forsake art for wine, each select a place for wonder to win
And begin their own quests across ages, from Swedenborg’s
Day to the darkness that only the most affecting of dreams
Might select. From inner experience out, as carried by thought
Found through object, and back again, the connection means
More than most things made for the eye. As if what has been
Mounted and set has been done to speak to us. Even Kenning’s
Rod prodded robots reason through whirr. Listen. Try.
For there are so many things here, house honed no YBA
Could quite conjure. It is as if ‘The Strange One’s’ sympathisers
Had gathered to find common choice and reassume
Rightful place before and inside observation;
From Vernon Watkins’ Swedenborg’s Skull typescript poem
To Xiaolu Guo’s mouthguard mould: taste as voice.
McNeilly has smiling eyes and I would hope a smiling mind
Looking over what he has collected, curated, cared for
And conveyed. The house opens up like a hand offered
To all. Magic moments. Which you can make just by seeing
What each Swedenborg wall has displayed.
ii:
STRANGE ONE STORED
The Strange One Graphic Novella greets you at the bookshop
Pay table. A Black and white diorama taking us
From Swedenborg’s birth in Stockholm all the way up
To the stars, which defines the power of form,
With classic comic compression, Christopher Hasler
And John Kaczmarczyk detail how one path through life
Can stretch far, beyond pages and print, hearsay
And conjecture and to go where William Blake would go
Lining their cities with what could well be called Angel scars.
After a childhood fire, Swedenborg rose through all fields
Of study; language and philosophy, mathematics, astronomy,
Every line lain to attain a higher state mind machine.
His searches took him to London where he was very nearly
Arrested after breaking a post plague quarantine. With Halley
And Flamsteed he worked and in 1713 sailed to Holland
Where he designed water clocks, aircraft and possibly
The first submarine. But it was his study of souls
With he first finds distinction; from Principia onwards
His writing and work strove beyond. Felt in mind flashes
Received until the appearance of Christ in his chamber,
The comic’s style assists comprehension and credence too:
Art as bond. Heaven and all of its wonders are heard
in this exciting arrangement of panels. With Swedenborg’s
Paged perspectives as he inhabits the living and dead
Journalised. We have seen comics like this since the start
But not with such a singular journey. Hasler and Kaczmarczyk
In their study reveal how this linguist of life should be prized
Not just by the devoted visitors to the house his Society
Tribes, but all people. Visionairies are lacking in the world
We have now: a rare breed. Or endangered species perhaps
So here for young and old, the full story. Of man and mystic,
And two world resident, with one screed which was intended
For all. As Swedenborg was the great unifier, praised
By Helen Keller and Goethe, Strindberg and Balzac,
Sadhu Sandar Singh and Carl Jung, who wrote a full flood
Of books into age and until his departing breath, teaching,
Reaching; so that we may all rise through, making verses
Vows to real heavens and galactic symphonies from what’s sung,
So, as a primer, through print those with sight can feel paper
As if it were braille and believe in something so much
Greater than he, she, they or them. The fact that there
Have been some on this earth who have been stung
By strange, unknown forces. The simplicity of the structure
In this pamphlet of praise shows the stem of one poet’s
Plant leading to a vast tree of knowledge. Where that forest is
If not Eden is a matter for Emanuel’s longtitude. Which he is
Still charting elsewhere. In black, white and grey (and blue
Cover) the graphic novella near bibles a holier than thee Or thou’s fortitude.
iii:
TIME IS TAPE
Another antique object to end: this time a tape,
Yellow flavoured, the lost fruit long fallen
Of unbroadcast radio; a documentary prepared
By Paul Green in 1979, Thatcher tainted
In which Lud Heat which led Iain into the books
To come attempts to achieve stereo.
LH is an Ur text for IS, flowering from the gardening
Work he began with; an ideal ground school
For a writer for whom a study of place becomes
Prize. As Sinclair moves from St. Anne’s Church,
Limehouse, across St. George’s Field to Whitechapel
And ‘from eyescape to inscape.. Hawksmoor’s church
Generators’ are a quantum catch dual winds whipped.
My tape player wound tight, so Sinclair sounded almost
Helium high as I listened, before gradually gaining
More low end as Catling and he probed the crypt
To examine the air wrent from ‘a Sumerian time of
sackcloth and ashes’ and where the death culture
Spurred by the first Ripper’s run was church housed.
It is a fascinating relic, this tape; the plastic child
Of paged parents, and listening to it is an echo.
You put your ear to a wall, not a shell, by way of one
Of Sinclair’s first books, and its essay on Brakhage’s
Film on autopsies in which it is predicated
That the first masks worn by people would have
Been the peeled faces of the dead. Thought as hell.
And equal to that which blooded the so called streets
Linked by churches. Sinclair’s book survey revealed
The connection between the unhoused soul
And the holy and how ruins were wrought from
Wren’s reconstruction of London. This twenty odd
Minute reminder lists at the end its rejector.
Ian McIntyre: defector from Devil or God?
Did Faust sell?
David Erdos 20/9/25
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