Stephen McNeilly

Updated on Nov 29, 2023

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Name Stephen McNeilly Role Writer		Books Several Clouds Colliding
Similar People Emanuel Swedenborg, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Chadwick

Stephen McNeilly (born 1968) is a London-based artist and writer whose research-lead practice includes photography, filmmaking, curating and book publishing. He is the Executive Director and Museum Director of the Swedenborg Society, London, and oversees its annual Swedenborg International Short Film Festival and Artist in Residence programme. In 2010 he curated Fourteen Interventions, a multi-disciplinary site responsive exhibition at Swedenborg house, which included work by Jeremy Deller, Bridget Smith, Iain Sinclair, Ben Judd and Olivia Plender. In 2016, with Bridget Smith, he co-curated Now it is Permitted: 24 Wayside Posters, an exhibition of posters designed by Bridget Smith and Fraser Muggeridge which included contributions by Cornelia Parker, Fiona Banner, Marina Warner, Chloe Aridjis, Ali Smith, Michael Landy, Gavin Turk and others.

His long-standing interest in the work of Emanuel Swedenborg informs much of his work and he has published on writers as diverse as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Arthur Cravan. In 2011 he set up the Swedenborg Archive imprint, a project which has included contributions from the writers Homero Aridjis, J. M. G. Le Clézio, Ken Worpole, Iain Sinclair and Brian Catling, and the publisher Book Works. As series editor of the Journal of the Swedenborg Society he has produced a number of volumes exploring the cultural influence of Swedenborg including Between Method and Madness, The Arms of Morpheus, In Search of the Absolute and On the True Philosopher. Notable contributors to the Journal include the poet Czeslaw Milosz and the Cambridge linguist John Chadwick. Annalisa Volpone has described the Journal as a 'mapping of the impact of Swedenborg's thought on the western literary imaginaire from romanticism to contemporary times'.

McNeilly is a founding editor of Dedecus Press, an interdisciplinary and collaborative publishing project, and is the overseeing editor for the Dedecus Dictionary and the Dedecus Picture Archive. Between 2004 and 2012 he was a visiting lecturer in Art, Philosophy and Critical Theory at the University of Creative Arts (Canterbury).

Selected works

2013 Swimming to Heaven: The Lost Rivers of London, an essay by Iain Sinclair, (book), Editor. ISBN 978-0854481798

2013 Philosophy, Literature, Mysticism: an anthology of essays on the thought and influence of Emanuel Swedenborg (book), Editor. ISBN 978-0854481613

2012 Several Clouds Colliding (book), Editor. ISBN 978-1906012410

2012 D T Suzuki: manuscripts and letters (exhibition), Curator, London.

2012 Memoirs of Swedenborg (book), Editor. ISBN 978-0854481682

2011 Blake's London: the Topographic Sublime, an essay by Iain Sinclair (book), Editor. ISBN 978-0854481705

2010 Heaven, Hell and Other Places (documentary), Producer, ISBN 978-0854481736

2010 Fourteen Interventions (exhibition), curator, London.

2010 Introducing the Mystic: an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson (publication), Editor/author ISBN 978-0854481569

2010 Art lands on Alien Landscape (exhibition/catalogue), Margate.

2008 Dedecus: A Dictionary Pt, 2 (publication), Author. ISBN 978-0955547225

2008 Dedecus: A Dictionary Pt, 1 (publication), Author. ISBN 978-0955547218

2008 Maintenant, Pt, 1 (publication) Editor/Author. ISBN 978-0955547249

2007 Rub-a-dub-dub (three person exhibition with Jacob Cartwright and Nick Jordan) Switzerland.

2007 The Arms of Morpheus (book), Editor. ISBN 978-0854481507

2006 George Berkeley's Commonplace Book (book), Editor. ISBN 978-0955547201

2005 Vertigo Gallery (solo exhibition), London.

2005 Between Method and Madness (book), Editor. ISBN 978-0854481453

2004 in Search of the Absolute (book), Editor. ISBN 978-0854481415

2002 on the True Philosopher (book), Editor. ISBN 978-0854481347

2001 on the Translator and the Latin Text; essays by John Chadwick (book), Editor. ISBN 978-0854481316

1996 Bonnington Gallery, The Margaret Bryan Award, (two person exhibition with Lotte Hammer) Nottingham.

References

Stephen McNeilly Wikipedia

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