William S. Burroughs exhibition at the October Gallery, London
Ciarán Ryan, Mar 2025
October Gallery is presenting a solo exhibition of rarely seen paintings, drawings and artworks by William S. Burroughs. Burroughs became a painter after the death of his friend and collaborator Brion Gysin. The exhibition ends on 5th April 2025.
Pictured: Art by William Burroughs on the walls of the October Gallery, London
I asked Kathelin Gray, exhibition curator, about the show, Burroughs’ art and its ecological themes. Here are a few lightly edited quotes from Kathelin.
A Burroughs art exhibition? Why now?
“We’re in such a crucial time. Not that humanity is ever in a non-crucial time, but in terms of humanity’s effect on the planet, it’s all built up… it’s like quicksand. And the more we struggle, the deeper we get.
“I thought we could use the occasion of the film Queer to expand public knowledge of William S. Burroughs, his thinking, and his writing.
“Humans are basically responsible for mass extinction of species, for plastics everywhere. And you know maybe there’s some kind of cosmic plan where the plastics perform some kind of… band of protective armour around the planet or something. But the reality is it’s really f****** with life in a major way. It’s all about profiteering.
“[Burroughs] speaks so directly about this… and that’s why I wanted to have this exhibition.
“There is an aspect of him which is way more dreamy than comes across in his novels.
“The process of creating Naked Lunch was experimental, but… it creates a very specific effect that’s not per se experimental.
“The effect that he was aiming for came out of the process of creation, which is to deconstruct the algorithms that are controlling your way of thinking internally, and externally your behaviour, and plays out on the world stage affecting the ecology, affecting other species in such a horrific way.
Pictured: Detail from Ten Gauge City, 1988, by William S. Burroughs, October Gallery, London
“His painting is allied, but it’s a different mission, and that is to access the subconscious, to find what’s hidden that speaks to you. So rather than deconstructing controlling thought forms and automatic thoughts, it’s more like what’s there that’s trying to get through in terms of intelligence. Which includes how do you access your own subconscious? What is in there? What do we know? What do you know that you don’t know?
“Artists are often on a mission to find that very thing out, and to express it and make visible what their points of view are, what their inner realities are. So with these paintings, you’re going to look at, you know, even obscure corners. And you can see a variety of butterfly species, for example, in that two square centimetres or here is a creature looking through, and so you access these intelligences.
“Burroughs had the assumption, which I think is very helpful, that intelligence is everywhere. How do you contact them? You look for them. You look for allies. What intelligences are allies that are trying to speak to you but you can’t hear them?
“It’s like, oh, what are the birds and the bees trying to tell us right? What is that in the dawn chorus? What are they saying? What are they saying about this time on the planet, or what are they saying about the clouds and the sun and all of that. We don’t know because we don’t look, we don’t listen, we don’t really try.
“It’s that looking for allies, that is how to look at his paintings, look for ways that you connect.”
Pictured (left): The Prison Scribe, ca 1990, by William S. Burroughs, October Gallery, London
Has Burroughs’ ecological awareness been overlooked?
“I am the voice in the wilderness here. I make the statement that I think he’s one of the greatest contemporary ecological thinkers that we have. I do believe that he was desperately concerned with ecology.
Pictured: Brion’s Birthday, 1992, by William S. Burroughs, October Gallery, London