Magical Art

 

Magical art is a hot topic right now, especially in the UK and USA. Australia has its own magical artist, Barry William Hale (b. 1969), a visual and performance artist and an occultist, who uses historical magical techniques in new and innovative ways to make original artworks.

Interest in empowerment through magic has never been more popular, and this explosion can be attributed to the internet. The BBC reports that “videos with the hashtag WitchTok have amassed more than 30 billion views”, while the “#witch hashtag has received nearly 20 billion views, #witchtiktok has nearly two billion views, and #babywitch, a hashtag for those new to the craft, has more than 600 million views.” While much online “magic” is about self-care and spruiking small businesses, magic is actually an ancient intellectual and somatic practice concerned with accessing supernatural entities and forces for knowledge, self-development, and power.

Magical art can be traced back to the Symbolists and Decadents of the late 19^th century. Joséphin Péladan, founder of the Salons de la Rose+Croix combined Catholicism, Rosicrucianism and occultism. Swedish artist Hilma af Klint was directly inspired by spiritual entities. Well-known modern artists such as Kazimir Malevich and Wassily Kandinsky were inspired by occultism, designers from the Bauhaus school were engaged with occult spirituality, and Surrealists Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varro’s works are suffused with magic and mystical imagery.

While historically magical art is reasonably new, magic itself has an old pedigree, and this is what Barry William Hale taps into when producing art. His magical influences and methods span the centuries from the ancient world until today and include accessing the powers of ancient Egyptian and Greek gods, Kabbalistic mysticism, Renaissance Hermetic magic, the Enochian system developed by Elizabethan court magician, John Dee, and the ritual techniques of famous twentieth century magicians Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Spare.

Barry William Hale’s work, ‘Demonomania Rhizotoma’ is on display at the State Library Victoria until 31 May 2026 in an exhibition called Creative Acts, curated by Michelle Moo, Angela Bailey, Kate Rhodes, Nandini Sathyamurthy, and me - Caroline Tully.