About the work

Twenty-First-Century Silks (THANK YOU) is a still taken from a video installation work first shown as part of Explode Every Day, MASSMoCA, North Adams (2016-17). The work was subsequently shown at Ryan Lee Gallery, New York (2016) during Donald Trump’s election; as part of The Act of Magic, STUK, Leuven (2017); and during the 8th Jafre Bienal, Northern Spain (2017). Twenty-First-Century Silks is a video installation that explores the cultural history of secular magic and its under-acknowledged presence in the ideological and political realms. In the work, two hands emerge from darkness to perform with conjurors’ silks which unfurl in tantalising slow motion to reveal visual devices, cryptic messages, popular icons like Mickey Mouse, and abstract nouns like FAITH and EGO. By sequencing and looping these inscrutable communications, Allen encourages the viewer's tendency to construe meaning from unrelated fragments. 

Politicians have, throughout history, often co-opted the language and technology of stage magicians. During the 2004 presidential election, George W. Bush used techniques honed by professional illusionists to miraculously appear at Madison Square Gardens. In 1959, Fidel Castro trained white doves to land on his body during a political rally to anoint his rise to power following the Cuban revolution. That propagandists have deployed theatrical magic's benign capabilities to promote their ideologies complicates the ethics of reception, and the responsibilities of spectatorship cannot be overlooked. 

Allen is interested in unconventional sites of enchantment and the reanimation of the historical trouvaille. Twenty-First-Century Silks (2016) recalls an era of stage magic when conjuring acts with brightly coloured silks and flags were staples in vaudeville performance. Allen's work features historical 'picture silks’, which were developed in the early twentieth century to bear droll slogans and popular motifs, alongside unsettling contemporary alternatives crafted by the artist. 

Date and country of birth

1966, GB

About the artist

Born UK 1966, Jonathan Allen lives and works in London. He graduated from MA Fine Art at Chelsea School of Art, London (1989); and PhD Fine Art, Kingston School of Art (2017).

Allen’s artistic work encompasses photography, video, performance, drawing, curatorial and archiving practices, and writing. His research focuses on the technology and politics of spectacular culture, and on magic’s various codifications in contemporary art and within wider cultural discourse.

Selected exhibitions include Placement does not explain, but cultivates a September garden / We Are Publication, Camden Art Centre, London (2020); The Collector’s Room, JGM Gallery, London (2020); 1d for Abroad, Tintype, London (2019); Casting for the Voice of Strength, Stanley Picker Gallery, London (2016); Twenty-First-Century Silks, Ryan Lee Gallery, New York (2016); Kalanag, David Risley Gallery, London (2008); VIII Bienal de Jafre (2017); Artefact: The Act of Magic, STUK, Leuven (2017); Drawing Biennial 2017, Drawing Room, London (2017); Explode Every Day, MASS MoCA, Massachusetts (2016-17); Drawing Biennial 2015, Drawing Room, London (2015); Adventureland Golf, Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol (2013); Outrageous Fortune, Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea (2011); Magic Show, Grundy Art Gallery, Hull (2010); The Great Transformation – Art & Tactical Magic, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt (2008); The Director’s Apartment, British School at Rome (2008); Belief, 1st Singapore Biennial (2006); Tommy Angel performance for Keep the Faith, Tate Britain, London (2006); and Variety, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea (2005).

Allen is an associate curator at the Magic Circle Museum, London and has authored a book on the English artist and mystic Austin Osman Spare, entitled Lost Envoy (2016).