THE ARTYTECHS PARLOUR

CHTHONIC TALES

Robert Hocking and Martin Sexton have invited a cauldron of artists, musicians, technologists and paranormal theorists into the Parlour. Under the Great House, there’s something unusual going on. Visit this surreal, intimate experience that blurs the boundaries of reality. Displaced to 'The Tunnel' that runs underneath the main body of the ancient house at Port Eliot and amongst its immediate grounds, Chthonic Tales is concerned with 'Magic & Illusion'.

The collected installations form their own narrative - singular artistic stories that sometimes combine & dovetail together. Preoccupied with myth, symbolism, magic and shamanic ritual, witness artworks and their accompanying stories with an open mind.

Consider - is that really the magician Austin Osman Spare's self-portrait alongside Adolf Hitler's skull portrait? Dare you enter Dando’s crypt, the infamous ghost of the Port Eliot Estate? Where exactly does one unearth a 5000 year old gold 'Metonic' Wizard's hat? Sip a love potion from the digital realm; has that chaise-longue really been transported from the future to the past - our present? Why is there a triptych of the Crow - the trickster – lurking in the shadows? Who is Zoltar and why is he magnificent? Is that UFO real - WARNING - are you witnessing a 24 hour abduction? Ever read a Book of Fire? And who on earth 'switched off Stonehenge?' Reach out and touch new dimensions, but be careful, they might just touch back!

September 05
“It was not a gallery, it was an experience”

"This year's Artytechs parlour at the Port Eliot Literature Festival reached a new realm of quality and inspiration. The carefully curated space offered an intriguing atmosphere into the wonderful worlds of the digital domain. Digital artists exhibited their installation projects to an audience of bewildered, intrigued and enticed visitors. Something worth keeping an open eye for in the future of the digital arts sector."
Nema El Nahas
Arts Council

"'I think I ended up wearing somebody else's clothes?"
Russell King
Poet

"... thanks from me too I had a brilliant time and thought the tunnel was magic."
Cassiel Dennis
Digital Media Development Manager
Creative Partnerships Cornwall & Plymouth

" Some people were scared to go into it and some that did were scared by it"
Chris Giri
Artist

"Something was going on down there. On occasion you could sense it."
Paul Hitchman
New Media Technologist & Founder of Playlouder.com

"It was fucking cool!"
Jonathan Ball
Theoretical physicist
Clarendon Laboratory
Oxford

"The tunnel was like a retreat into the womb of the earth following some technological disaster. Scattered within: a Neo-Pagan altar; a rotting piece of meat taken from above; fragments of video neon and shattered electrics; magical rabbits and hares... embodiments of the freedom to move between the surface and the underworld. Chthonic Tales was a post-Apocalypse return to first principles, a rebirth within the wounded birth-canal of Gaia."
Christian Pattison
Editor and publisher
The Illustrated Ape magazine

"Chthonic tales not unexpectedly expected the unexplainable - a million
miles away from the polite middle class way normally inherent at most
'literary' festivals. A nameless curator given 'medicine' by Gimpo in homage
to Hunter S. Thompson and technology fused with unruly mysticism."
Martin Sexton
Curator & Writer

Akira the Don
Kenneth Anger
Mark Bennett
The Blacksmoke Organisation
Sam Buxton - Time Traveller
James Cauty - Junior Insurgent Transistor Ensemble
Alex De Cadenet
Shezad Dawood
Rod Dickinson
Tom Ellis
Chris Giri
Glorious Ninth
Anton Goldstein
Alex Hamilton
Milo Hennessy
HMC - Dando's Crypt
i-DAT - Port-Pods
Piers Jackson
Jungulator
Peeter Laurits
John Mcleod
Parlour Band
Jamie Reid
R. W. de Salis
Martin Sexton
Submerge
Truth Machine
Zanna
Zoltar the Magnificent

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