Rachel Rose
Wil-o-Wisp, 2018
Single-channel video
10' 6"
Edition of 5 plus 2 artist's proofs
Copyright The Artist
Further images
Wil-o-Wisp draws from historical accounts of 17th C. agrarian England, the story follows Elspeth Blake, a mystic and healer, across three decades. Across a series of tableaux, we see her...
Wil-o-Wisp draws from historical accounts of 17th C. agrarian England, the story follows Elspeth Blake, a mystic and healer, across three decades. Across a series of tableaux, we see her life unfold in a world where animism suffused the forest and magic was real. Meanwhile, the process of enclosure — the division of previously common land — was violently re-shaping the landscape into what would become modern industrialised society. By focusing in on this time and place, Rose redirects the past in which this perspective rooted in the supernatural, coincidence, and magical transformations might be rehabilitated towards imagining a future.
Exhibitions
Witches! On Body, Knowledge and Power, Kulturspeicher Würzburg, October 7, 2023 - January 14, 2024Rachel Rose: Wil-o-Wisp/The Future Fields Commission, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, 2 May - 16 September 2018.
Rachel Rose: Wil-o-Wisp/The Future Fields Commission, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo