Monika Morgenstern, Orbis, 2022, ink on aluminium, 90 x 90cm. Photo: Grant Hancock

Otherworldly atmospheric abstractions delve deep into the idea of ‘the mysterious’.

With a long-standing interest in colour, perception and phenomenology, Monika Morgenstern’s practice explores the numinous, or the supernatural, and how undefinable complex feelings can be experienced on a deeply personal, emotional and psychological level.

Morgenstern perceives that we are again on the precipice of cataclysmic social and political change, and her work addresses our need for a more enchanted universe at a time of enormous geopolitical and economic stresses. Her practice is situated within the complex and ever-evolving endeavour to reinvent the healing project of ‘spirituality’ for itself.

The artist interviewed many people about their mystical experiences and found that the language used carries tremendous power and emotion. This exhibition was inspired by those words, as well as quotes from diverse sacred texts and emotionally arresting poetry. The works also explore ectoplasm, a substance which is said to be formed by a medium in a state of trance, and that spiritual entities drape over their nonphysical body enabling them to interact in the here and now.