About this event
CREATURE Lab is an on-demand laboratory to pitch and test ideas for further research development. It aims to provide a collegial platform to rehearse and/or seek feedback for a research presentation, practice and publication. It brings together a researcher and participants to explore a research idea and/or project through show and tell. The interactive lab is decided for the presenter to experiment a preconceived project for further study and/or examine matters related to research development and collaboration.
In this CREATURE Lab, Dr Huxtable explored the popular visual and material culture of fortune telling between the World Wars in Britain, including souvenirs, magazine articles and giveaways, pamphlets, games, cigarette cards, and ceramics, and the ways in which these objects and images were used to negotiate materiality and spirituality in the modern world. It examined the idea of the Romani Fortune Teller as an exoticised and gendered figure of fantasy and fear that, nevertheless, offered a sense of authenticity and veracity in an age when narratives of science, materialism and modernity increasingly dominated the everyday. It contended that the fascination with divination and fortune tellers is more that ‘escapism’, and that the persistent belief in the enchantment of everyday life was a bid for imaginative agency, and a refusal of materialism in an age of increasing mechanisation, urbanisation, and uniformity.
This research was part of a larger body of work on the relationship between design and the occult in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Europe, focusing on the intersections of esotericism and colonialism.
Sally-Anne Huxtable is Associate Professor in Critical and Contextual Studies (Design). Her work focuses on spirituality, belief, visual and material culture, colonialism, and landscape. She was formerly Head Curator of the National Trust where she led the work on slavery and colonialism at NT properties, and was Principal Curator of Modern and Contemporary Design at National Museums Scotland.
Image: 'Humphrey Spender, Palmist, Blackpool September 1937, copyright Bolton Council. From the collection of 'Bolton Museum'.
Details
| Date/time | Wednesday, 04 December 2024, 5.30pm - 6:30pm |
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| Book ticket | Event ended |
| Location | The Atrium Library (GSG-15), London Metropolitan University, Aldgate Campus |
