ECTOPLASMIX – The Gallery of Everything

About

From 5th October to 30th November 2025, The Gallery of Everything presents Ectoplasmix, a major exhibition exploring the strange history and contemporary legacy of ectoplasm in art and culture.

The exhibition traces the word’s roots from 19th-century science, when anatomist Thomas Henry Huxley used the term to describe the transparent outer layer of cytoplasm in protozoa, to its later adoption by spiritualists and psychical researchers who claimed to witness ectoplasm emanating from mediums during séances. By the early 20th century, this mysterious substance had become a central feature of spiritualist practice across Europe, North America and beyond.

Photographs, reports, and artworks document its contested existence—sometimes revered as a physical manifestation of the dead, at other times dismissed as trickery. Artists from Madge Gill and Austin Osman Spare to Mike Kelley, Susan Hiller and Tony Oursler have drawn on ectoplasm’s slippery symbolism, reimagining it in drawings, installations, and photographs.

Ectoplasmix brings together historic material and contemporary responses, asking whether this elusive form half-scientific, half-spiritual—can still resonate in today’s world of scepticism and spectacle.

Find out more, here.