Join us for the Private Viewing of the exhibition SIMON MARSDEN: Traces of the Unseen

SIMON MARSDEN: Traces of the Unseen

Join us at 198 Contemporary Arts & Learning on November 2, 2026 at 7:00 PM (GMT) for an evening celebrating the work of Sir Simon Marsden (1948-2012). Dive into his world of thresholds, liminality, and the fascination of the human spirit and the supernatural in daily rituals and practices, brought to life through his unique infra-red photography of ruins, landscapes, and haunted sites.

The exhibition brings together the photographic archive of The Hyman Collection and the poetry collective Make Poetry Weird Again, inviting the viewer to embrace the optically invisible traces of the otherworldly through meditative slow-looking: it's all about slowing down.

Curated by Central Saint Martins MA CCC students, Layza Afanasyeva, Sowon Kim, Julia lwinska, Yuri You, Crispim Da Silva, Beyza Demirçali, Anastasia Velikova, the exhibition compiles original photographic prints, large-scale reprints, and moving-image. Attendees will have a chance to participate in a poetry-writing workshop, engaging with the works to imagine the thresholds of the seen and unseen, the liminal nature of presence and absence, led by a monologue and a series of prompts by Nols Nathankski.

SIMON MASRDEN

One of the most celebrated British photographers of the last fifty years, Simon Marsden’s use of infra-red film created a unique way of capturing the world, his fascination with the supernatural world leading him to focus his camera lens on ruins, natural landscapes, sites of spiritual activity and haunted places. Marsden believed that the human and the supernatural exist in the same realm, roam the same earth, but we humans have forgotten how to listen to what is beyond our scientific understanding. He travelled across Europe, Ireland, Britain, the United States, to capture his awe of the otherworldly, and to tell the stories of his encounters.

THE HYMAN COLLECTION

The Hyman Collection was founded by Claire and James Hyman in London in 1996 and is one of the world’s most important collections of British photography, representing its breadth and richness with over 30 000 photographs. The Collection aims at making its archive accessible to a global audience, and fostering an engagement with photography in Britain. The archive holds important historic photographs and vintage works by Bill Brandt, John Deakin, Kurt Hutton and Edith Tudor Hart, alongside important contemporary work by young artists especially by women, including Heather Agyepong, Juno Calypso, Arpita Shah and Paloma Tendero. The Hyman Collection includes conceptual artists working in photography such as Helen Chadwick, Gilbert and George, Douglas Gordon, Rose Finn-Kelcey, Jo Spence and Jane and Louise Wilson.

Website (https://hymancollection.org)

MAKE POETRY WEIRD AGAIN

Make Poetry Weird Again is an experimental poetry collective. Led by poet, performer and podcast host Nols Nathankski, the collective organises live events, workshops, podcasts to activate the world of poetry for a wider audience. Through guided workshops and performances, the collective engages the audience in automatic writing, guiding them to create poems that push the boundaries of form and comfort.

Podcast (https://open.spotify.com/show/4ZsriZKcZdNMtpSImKQnHV)

Website (https://www.outsavvy.com/organiser/make-poetry-weird-again)

Description supplied by the event organiser.