The Manchester Museum Early Edition
The Alchemical Times
The University of Manchester
September – December 2007
Mysterious Transformations in The Manchester Museum
It is not known whether the artists working with The Manchester Museum on the ongoing project ‘Alchemy’ are employing ancient scientific methodology or the stuff of magic.
Image credit: The Hermetic Museum: Alchemy & Mysticism, Taschen, 2006. Courtesy Alexander Roob.
I
t is not known whether the artists working with The Manchester Museum on the ongoing project ‘Alchemy’ are employing ancient scientific methodology or the stuff of magic, say museum curators and art critics. The origin and meaning of the word ‘alchemy’ has been disputed by commentators throughout history, although early practitioners who attempted to turn base metals into gold considered it a divine and sacred art. A more scientific interpretation was proffered by the third-century philosopher Alexander of Aphrodisias, who described alchemy as work undertaken in a laboratory, developed from the practice of preparing plants for medicinal purposes. The Suda, a 10th-century Byzantine Greek historical encyclopaedia, on the other hand, describes alchemy as involving the knowledge of Egyptian art – Chemi, Cham or the Black Land being the ancient name for Egypt – while the 17th-century Dutch physician and botanist Hermann Boerhaave believed it developed out of the occult, and was derived etymologically from the Hebrew chamaman, or hamaman, ‘a mystery’ or religious secret. Still other theories suggest origins such as the ancient quest for the elixir of life and a psychological trope. Now, however, in 21st-century Manchester it would seem that none of these explanations are entirely satisfactory. We might consider the art of ancient Egypt as arcane, the methods of alchemists unscientific and the occult as, frankly, improbable. What we can be sure of, though, is that the idea of the transmutation of base matter remains a tantalising idea, even if only as a metaphor. Some might say that art performs an analogous feat, as it
———————{
reconfigures material – perhaps amorphous paint, raw metal or everyday objects – into valuable artworks. Indeed the mere touch of some artists has increased the value of such objects as a urinal beyond measure. Yet there is another equivalence we might consider: that artists also make the hidden visible and enrich the apparently banal, affecting through sensory, emotional or intellectual means the viewer and the institution in which the work is made or shown. At The Manchester Museum just such transformations have been put into effect by artists Mark Dion, Spring Hurlbut, Antony Hall, Pavel Büchler, Louise Brookes, Kevin Malone, Ilana Halperin, Jamie Shovlin, Jordan Baseman and Nick Jordan & Jacob Cartwright during the ongoing ‘Alchemy’ project. In some instances the artist has reconfigured the contents of the museum, bringing to light artefacts that escape conventional categories or making links between departments that have been hitherto overlooked. At other times it is in the museumgoer that the change takes place, as revelation and disclosure provoke new connections in the most open and enlightened minds. Alchemy curator Bryony Bond explains how, unlike many artists’ residencies in museums – where the artist casts about among the museum archives somewhat cursorily, makes a piece of work in keeping with their ordinary practice and then disappears from the institution – here the artists have actually instigated real change. These changes have been apparent not only within the museum displays, but in its day-to-day operations, and the artists too have altered their own ideas about such phenomena as documentation and objectivity. See reports on pages 2 & 10 for more on these stories.
www.alchemy.manchester.museum
inside today
grrrrrrr! Anger as Call of the Wild charges rise to 15p a minute mummy held down full-time job Ancient sarcophagus found to contain corpse of ancient quantity surveyor insects blamed for global warming “CO2 emissions of the most abundant creature on the planet must surely count for something,” says bloke in the pub objective of subjectivity found to be objectionable
———————
}