Throughout his publishing career, Rowell has emphasised the experiential nature of both his practices, advocating for the therapeutic potential of each. His work invites a deeper understanding of the artist’s relationship with self and underscores the authenticity that arises from such introspection, leaving an indelible mark on the intersection of art, publishing and psychoanalytic discourse.
UncertainStates Issue 24
UncertainStates Issue 18
UncertainStates Issue 16
Spencer Rowell’s career in publishing reflects his deep engagement with the intersection of art, psychology, and self- exploration. As a founding member of Uncertain States, an artist-led collective, Rowell helped establish a platform for showcasing lens-based art and creative writing. Through its quarterly broadsheet, supported by Arts Council England, Uncertain States provided a vital space for emerging and established artists, fostering a community through exhibitions, artist talks, and workshops.
In 2017, Rowell published his doctoral project, An Exploration of Pathography within Phototherapy: An Analysis of the Photographic Self-Portrait. This work solidified his reputation in using art as a means of therapeutic self-exploration. His research centered on “Pathography,” a concept rooted in Freud’s analysis of Leonardo da Vinci. Freud examined the artefact as a window into the artist’s psychological motivations and self-representation to uncover deeper insights into the creator’s internal world. His practice-based thesis involved a monthly exchange over two years of ambiguous, abstract self-portraits with two psychoanalysts, pictures for words.
Rowell extended these ideas through Imago-X, a broadsheet publication that merged psychoanalysis and art, inviting readers to explore the overlap of words, images, and personal history. With its experimental approach it offered a space where language and metaphor transform into visual and emotional experiences.
Imago-X
Pathography, Psychoanalysis & Art
Psychoanalysis, writes Freud in American Imago, is "an art of interpretation".
American Imago was founded by Sigmund Freud and Hanns Sachs in 1939.
The art of seeing to make interpretations might produce a portrait or assessment, as evidence, displayed on a gallery or consulting room wall; the surfaces may be seen, at first glance, by most viewers as the same thing. The surface easily discussed, a diagnosis made, but what is seen? And what language do we speak of what is seen?
Imago-XPathography, Psychoanalysis & Art
What lies beneath the surface is less definable, more uncertain and ever changing. This informs the surface. Seen differently, more importantly experienced, by whoever is looking, the surfaces can be described only from this position. Both past, present and future are in its making. Based on a more experiential and qualitative process of creative understanding within practice.
We read between the lines, converse with what we see. The artefact, and how it speaks becomes the psychoanalytic subject.
THE IMAGO-X PROJECT
The agenda of Imago X is to evoke the magic of poetry and the artistry which is found at the heart of psychoanalysis; it inhabits the ambiguity that exists at the heart of all of our relationships whilst aiming to create something both potent and playful.
What lies beyond this surface is less definable, more uncertain and ever changing, yet this is informs this surface. We paint our pathography in its looking and making, a more experiential and qualitative process of creative understanding within practice.
IMAGO-X offers a place of contemplation and conversation where words overlap to become images and vice versa. It brings the language of psychoanalytic discourse alongside that of the language of art. The figurative expression, the trope, the symbolism and metaphors that lies at the heart of much that we find in seeing and of interpreting language of personal history and experience. That alchemical magic at the heart of psychodynamic practice—its discourse, theories and research—being more aligned with that of the artist in-practice. It is the making and remaking as (re)searching, of the artefact as the psychoanalytic subject that is the IMAGO-X project.