Curating the Dark: Putting Together My Network of Art Halloween Exhibition

This Friday, I'll be exhibiting at Network of Art's Halloween edition at Arclite House, and I wanted to take you behind the scenes of how this exhibit came together. If you missed my announcement post, you can catch up there first. Curating it has been a bit of a challenge, and not for the reason you might expect….

Curating to a Theme (When You're Used to Telling a Story)

Usually, when I curate my work for an exhibition, it's built around storytelling. I start with a narrative and let the pieces follow it, so the whole show feels like one long conversation. This time was different. The theme was handed to me: Halloween. Instead of building a story from the ground up, I needed to select work that would slot into an existing prompt.

Luckily, I love Halloween. So much that I'll say it again… I LOVE HALLOWEEN. And most of my work already lives in the realm of unease we associate with this beautifully spooky season. A lot of what I make can be read as dark, so the problem wasn't finding work that fit the theme… it was the opposite. The majority of my collected works could have made the cut, and the real challenge was distilling it all down to a selection that felt considered rather than crowded.

Making Room for the Craft

One decision I made early on: this was finally the time to exhibit some of my personal pagan crafts, alongside my art.

It's something I've wanted to do for a while, but I've never quite found the right exhibition narrative for it to sit within. If not at Halloween, when? The season felt like permission. So carefully scattered around the collection, almost like offerings, you'll find compositions of taxidermy bones, dried flowers and herbs, trinkets and curios. They're not set apart from the paintings. They're dotted through the space, part of the same atmosphere.

Putting fine art and pagan crafts side by side wasn't only a Halloween decision… It’s an Autobiographical one. This is how my own home looks. Fine art covers the walls, and in amongst it there's a scattering of skulls, sigils and bones. Nothing in my house is kept in a separate box labelled "art" or "witchcraft", it all just lives and breathes together. So the display ends up feeling a lot like walking into my eclectic living space, which makes this probably the most honest way I could have chosen to show the work.

A little insight on Paganism

I've mentioned being a practicing pagan a few times now, so I want to share a little about what that really means to me, because it isn't what most people picture. When people hear "witch", they tend to think of a pointy hat and a cauldron from a film, ( I mean, yes I do own many pointy hats and cauldron’s)  but it's so much more than that.

Paganism is an umbrella term for a whole family of nature-based spiritual beliefs. There's no single holy book to follow, no single founder and no one set of rules to live by. It's a deeply personal belief system guided by ancient traditions and wisdom. I see the natural world as sacred, and the turning of the seasons as something to live alongside rather than just watch pass. Birth, growth, death and rebirth aren't abstract ideas, they're happening outside the window all year round. Rituals, altars and offerings are the ways I mark that, say thank you, and stay connected to old wisdom. When we embrace the magic and transformation that happens around us every day, it becomes easier to embrace those things within ourselves when facing life's challenges.

I refuse to treat the dark parts of the cycle as something shameful or fear-ridden. Rather, I actively celebrate the darkness by finding the beauty within it. That's a thread that runs through my art, too. It's why I can paint grief and rot without flinching, and why a bundle of carefully selected bones and dried herbs doesn't feel out of place beside my canvas. They both come from the same place of intention.

The quiet connection: Samhain  

Halloween and Samhain are close relatives to one another. Samhain, which falls at the end of October into the start of November, is a pagan sabbat that I hold very close to my heart. It marks the close of the harvest and the turn into the dark half of the year. It's the time when the veil between worlds is said to be at its thinnest, and a time for remembering the dead and honouring ancestors.

A lot of what we now do at Halloween, from the costumes to the candlelit pumpkins to the ghost stories, grew out of that older pagan festival. So there's something fitting about the two sides of this show landing together now: the spooky, theatrical Halloween that everyone knows, and the quieter, older one underneath it. The bones, the herbs, the offerings and the grief-heavy paintings are all, in their own way, about sitting with death and decay rather than looking away from it.

Featured works

Nervous Terrain will have its premiere at this event. It's a new exploratory and beautifully unsettling digital collage series, about Chronic illness and grief. These prints are hand-finished prints in acrylic, gold leaf and ink. I have recently written a blog that deep dives into the meaning behind this work, and you can click here to read it in full. It's the newest work in the room, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how people respond and resonate with it.

Nervious Terrain , 'Bah' , Digital collarge hand finished in acrylic & ink.

She Sore Red is one of the key paintings from my back catalogue. It's a large expressionist piece in red hues, showing an unsettling human figure perched on the shoulder of a portrait. The portrait holds hallowed eye contact with the viewer and dares you to look away. (Most people look away first.)

She sore red, Acrylic & Oil on canvas

Expressionist portraiture with distorted faces, a selection of pieces that sit somewhere between recognition and discomfort.

Payne, Acrylic & Oil on canvas

Tempest is a new body of large abstract expressionist works: chilling, turbulent seascapes that feel straight out of a gothic novel. They're unsettling and visceral, yet with a deeply classical charm.

Tide, Acrylic & Oil on canvas

Between the paintings, the collages and the offerings, I hope the show feels like walking through the hidden corners of my head, with a little Halloween mischief thrown in.

The story found me anyway

I started this process by telling myself that, for once, I wasn't curating around a story. The theme was Halloween, the brief was set, and all I had to do was choose. But as I've been writing this and sharing the thinking behind it, I've realised I've uncovered a story in it without meaning to: the walls of my home, the bones and the paintings living side by side, Samhain sitting underneath Halloween, grief and decay given shape instead of being hidden away.

I guess I can't help it. Telling stories is a big part of who I am as an artist, and it's a big part of who we all are as human beings. We make meaning out of the things we collect, the things we keep, and the things we're afraid to look at.  I am very grateful that storytelling haunts my very existence. (Woooohoooooo, spooky noises.)

Come and see it all in person… 

Network of Art is Friday 23rd October, from 5pm, at Arclite House, Century Road, Peatmoor, Swindon (SN5 5YN). Entry and parking are free, there are drinks on arrival and a spread of food, and I'll be sharing the space with the brilliant Charlotte Snipe. Fancy dress is encouraged, and there are prizes for the best fiends.

I'll be there all evening. Come and find me, and tell me which piece you looked away from first.

You can see more of my work at harriedearingart.com and at Studio BRUT.

— Harrie