Emily Hunt
Talking Board/Spirit Board, 2025
premium print with linen finish and ceramic planchettes
48.2 × 73.6 cm (19 × 29 in)
Copyright The Artist
Further images
Please get in touch with us at info@sim-smith.com to arrange purchase and shipping. Artists and writers in the past have utilised the spirit board—also known in popular culture as the...
Please get in touch with us at info@sim-smith.com to arrange purchase and shipping.
Artists and writers in the past have utilised the spirit board—also known in popular culture as the Ouija board—to open up creative pathways. Sylvia Plath and James Merrill both used handmade spirit boards to contact entities, and these conversations with the other side entered into their poetry. Dorothy Iannone conducted séances with other artists using her painted spirit board. A famous answer that came through the board during one session was: What is the meaning of art? The answer: E.S.P.
As a magickal technology, there is nothing as simple—or as powerful—as the alphabet. Emily Hunt painted her alphabet over the course of a year. It was shown in its complete, original watercolour form in her solo exhibition The Grotto at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2024. Her goal was always to take this ornamental, organic alphabet and transform it into a magical tool for others to use in communicating with the other side. The result is an edition of 11 spirit boards, each with an individual ceramic planchette - to be used in company, and with reverence to the guidelines of contacting spirits.
Artists and writers in the past have utilised the spirit board—also known in popular culture as the Ouija board—to open up creative pathways. Sylvia Plath and James Merrill both used handmade spirit boards to contact entities, and these conversations with the other side entered into their poetry. Dorothy Iannone conducted séances with other artists using her painted spirit board. A famous answer that came through the board during one session was: What is the meaning of art? The answer: E.S.P.
As a magickal technology, there is nothing as simple—or as powerful—as the alphabet. Emily Hunt painted her alphabet over the course of a year. It was shown in its complete, original watercolour form in her solo exhibition The Grotto at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2024. Her goal was always to take this ornamental, organic alphabet and transform it into a magical tool for others to use in communicating with the other side. The result is an edition of 11 spirit boards, each with an individual ceramic planchette - to be used in company, and with reverence to the guidelines of contacting spirits.