Ilana Bellville

Ilana Bellville is an artist based in London and Melbourne Australia.

She has a BA in The History and Philosophy of Science and Art history from Melbourne University and an MFA in Film from Columbia University. She is currently completing her MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art.

Her short films have screened at many international festivals including Sundance and the London Film Festival.

She is currently working on an essay film about painting as a pharmacopeia exploring pigments and ancient medicinals.

I come to painting with my eyes upended all sympathetic magic passing through my hands to touch the tubes of paint. The process alchemical, mysterious, like a divination. The boundaries between things are evisercated.

Summoning a kind of radical materialism I ask the paint to reveal its own materiality and messages and to help me digest my own explorations into consciousness and a long time illness that has deeply affected my way of seeing and feeling in the world.

My influences are drawn as much from the occult as from nature and the imaginary. From my experiences in this world and in the worlds which remain both invisible and yet, for me, utterly present to the touch. These works are out of bounds, occupied with the transcendent . Made in delicate times there is a grief sewn inside them bursting into flames.

My hope is that these offerings can be suggest an opportunity for the kind of healing that might have taken place in Asclepius’s dream temples and which is so so needed in our time. As a gesture towards radical visions and sensations for all. Me, you, world, off world.

MY BODY: MY GHOST [SATELLITTE WORLD] — OIl on Linen 140 x 180 cm

MY BODY: MY GHOST [SATELLITTE WORLD] DETAIL

MY BODY : MY GHOST [] — Oil on Linen 122x 152 cm

MY BODY MY GHOST

MY RETINUE OF GHOULS

PROFANE AND DANCING

DIZZY DRUNK AND SHRIEKING

THROUGH A PHANTASMAGORIA

OF STARS

JANAKA STUKEY

ASCEND ASCEND

THE HOUR OF THE STAR — AN ARTIST STATEMENT VOICE OVER 5.33 MINS

Experimental film Narration / Storytelling Voice

Medium:

DRAWINGS ON KHADI PAPER

Size:

10.5 x 14.8cm AND 14X21 cm

Abstraction Multiverse Perspective Quantum Physics

[untitled] FROM THE MOTHER OF MAGIC — OIL ON CANVAS 20x 20 cm

[untitled] FROM THE MOTHER OF MAGIC — OIL ON CANVAS 10x12 cm

earth pigments Invisible Connections Magic Noli Me Tangere

Medium:

OIL ON LINEN

Size:

121 X 152cm

Painting

chronic illness Identity And Body Transparency

CHYMICAL WEDDING — A CHYMICAL WEDDING takes place as a silver length of silk takes on many forms as it is exposed to light. A story animistic and bedevilled unfolds . 5 MIN 55 SECONDS

These two films are a kind of ritual summoning, an astral conversation with the unknown. Made frame by frame in a black box space and edited in camera in the spirit of the early experimental films of Stan Brakhage and Hollis Frampton they work in parallel with my paintings, .

I’d like to think of them as a contribution to Frampton’s incomplete Magellan Cycle ; a discursive rumination of life death and the universe. A pre-object ontology dance with the elements and my own body. Here I enter the dark . A piece of silver silk, a Phantom crystal, false eyelashes, wound bandage and a mirror are then exposed to the light and to chance so as to enter into the spell of matter in a way similar to how I work with paint as emulsion.

Medium:

VIDEO 5.55MINS

Alchemy Experimental film Ritual Unconscious

SPELL — OIL ON LINEN 121X152 CM

SPELL DETAIL

A ritual practice for me in a difficult time. Made with hand dyed wool, eucalyptus, she-oak and a variety of trance indicing and protective plants including Storax, Mugwort, Nettle, Dragonsblood, Eucalyptus, Frankinsence and Rose Petals.

A prayer has been blown into each object to offer protection, love and care as taught to me by Julia Inglis @Sacred Familiar.

Medium:

WOOL, VARIOUS MAGICALLY CHARGED RESINS AND PLANTS FRANKINSENSE, COPAL RESIN. DRAGONS BLOOD, MUGWORT, STYRAX,

Conceptual Healing Creature Spirituality Textiles wool

Ilana Bellville

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Royal College of Art