The witch is a fascinatingly disruptive figure of femininity, mischief and behaving badly. Naomi Fry in a New Yorker article from 2018, 'The Many Faces of Women who Identify as Witches', writes that:

'The witch is often understood as a mishmash of sometimes contradictory clichés: sexually forthright but psychologically mysterious; threatening and haggish but irresistibly seductive; a kooky believer in cultish mumbo-jumbo and a canny she-devil; a sophisticated holder of arcane spiritual knowledge and a corporeal being who is no thought and all instinct..'

This holds true for this issue of Arty, which features witches as different as the chic New Yorker Gillian Holroyd from Bell Book and Candle and the terrifying Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz. But it isn’t only cinema that is fascinated by witches, we also feature four exhibitions that focus on witches and witchcraft, from The Witching Hour at Studio 1.1 in London, to Spellbound at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

As always with Arty our focal point is imagery and in our Witches Gallery we have a host of witch related visuals including a Pelham Puppet, a black cat and a collection of fortune telling objects.

So double, double, toil and trouble and welcome to Arty 41.


Cathy Lomax
Editor

Cathy Lomax, Suspiria

The contributors to Arty 41 are: Lucy Bolton, Rose Bradshaw, David Bradshaw, Kirsty Buchanan, Jennifer Campbell, Paul Carey-Kent, Annabel Dover, Malcolm Gaskill, Sarah Grainger-Jones, Delaine Le Bas, Hayley Lock, Cathy Lomax, Alex Michon, Rebecca Parkin, Alice Pember, Paige Perkins, Georgia Platman, Alli Sharma, lili spain, Kelly Sweeney, Mimei Thompson

*****************************************************************************************

Arty 41 is available from Transition Gallery & the following stockists and costs £4


or buy online:

Arty 41 + UK Shipping