David Tibet discusses INVOCATION OF HALLUCINATORY MOUNTAlN (Some Gnostic Cartoons) #2

Filmed and directed by Nicholas Abrahams at Isis Gallery, London and at Hope Cottage, Hastings. December 2008 on the occasion of David Tibet’s exhibition Invocation of Hallucinatory Mountain (Some Gnostic Cartoons). Isis Gallery presents INVOCATION OF HALLUCINATORY MOUNTAlN (Some Gnostic Cartoons) by David Tibet Recent works on paper inspired by Apocryphal, Gnostic and Hallucinatory scriptures. Private view: Friday 28th November 2008 6pm-8pm 29th November - 10th Jan 2009 11am-6pm Tuesday to Saturday For INVOCATION OF HALLUCINATORY MOUNTAlN (Some Gnostic Cartoons), David Tibet will install a beguiling cycle of recent works on paper that have sprung from his intense study of scriptural and apocryphal Gnostic and Christian texts in the Coptic language as well as from his joyous exploration of the Canon of Apocalyptic Cartoons. David Tibet’s visionary drawings are those of the artist as scribe illuminating the contours and spaces of our shared spirit worlds. Tibet’s work is profoundly magical in intention and it portrays and describes the dimensions of hallucinatory bodies and their worlds, where writing and image are both fluid and entwined. His drawings are child-like, playful and comical, as he continues his colouring in of the universes. In these spaces the hierarchy of human, animal and spirit forms is dissolved: masks dream of planets and grin at moons. The imaginative world that Tibet gives form to is one in which writing and speech are divine, full of promises and threats. This investigation of word and form is rooted in his studies of the Coptic language, as well as in readings of ecstatic canonical and non-canonical Christian texts. However, these ideas are filtered through a uniquely English sensibility that places him in the tradition of such diverse figures as Enid Blyton, Aleister Crowley and Louis Wain. His idiosyncratic and passionate work shines an inmost light on the pleasures and horrors of the divine comedy that we all inhabit.