Jonathan Allen

Jonathan Allen (UK, 1966) is a London-based artist, writer and educator whose work has featured in many exhibitions and publications in the UK and internationally since the early 1990s. He is best known for his work addressing the cultural histories of enchantment and for his performance alter ego, the faux gospel magician Tommy Angel. Allen has taught widely in UK art schools as well as regularly contributing to specialist international lecture programs. He is a curator at London's Magic Circle Museum, and in 2009 initiated and co-curated the Hayward Gallery touring exhibition Magic Show. As a frequent contributor to the New York-based art & culture journal Cabinet he has written on subjects as diverse as arboreal camouflage, asymmetric town twinning, and the stage history of shadows. Allen's recent book Lost Envoy (2016) examining early twentieth-century cartomancy is published by Strange Attractor Press and distributed by MIT Press.