Time for Magic: A Shamanarchist's Guide to the Wheel of the Year | Jamie Reid, Stephen Ellcock, Philip Carr-Gomm & John Marchant
Time for Magic offers an fascinating survey of Jamie Reid's incredible art, structured around the eight seasonal festivals of the Wheel of the Year: the solstices, equinoxes and Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain. Jamie observed these festivals himself, holding rituals at his allotment on the banks of the Mersey and focusing on the theme in his later paintings. This book feat key Wheel of the Year artworks as well as famous earlier pieces, including the pre-Punk, Situationist inspired agit-prop work and art he produced for the Sex Pistols.
Curator Stephen Ellcock has selected the art and, in his own inimitable creative style, arranged it into season-themed chapters, as well as including images of Druidic ceremonies held by Jamie's great uncle, Chief Druid George Watson MacGregor Reid, who helped revive the Summer Solstice ceremonies at Stonehenge. In conversation with Jamie's gallerist John Marchant, Ellcock introduce Jamie's life, legacy and love of making trouble, while Marchant's captions give deep insight into the individual artworks. Philip Carr-Gomm writes about the turning seasons of the Wheel of the and how we can live in rhythm with their everchanging energies.
This is an extraordinary volume that fuses Punk with Druidry, and mysticism with social and political activism – all bound together by the thread of British counterculture, from the art school. strikes, Situationism and Punk to the miners strikes, rave culture, campaigns for access to sacred sites and passionate environmentalism.