"Smoke and Mirrors nudges you towards humility and scepticism: get seduced by the glitter, then see everything you think you know vanish in a puff of smoke" 

Time Out London ****

 

In 2019 Al Hopwood initiated and co-curated the exhibition Smoke and Mirrors: The Psychology of Magic at Wellcome Collection. The exhibition brought together objects from the history of magic, spiritualism, parapsychology and neuroscience to explore the psychology of belief, memory and perception, against the backdrop of our so-called 'post-truth' age.

 

Exhibits included a ghost hunting kit, wax fingerprints created by a 'spirit', Tommy Cooper's Fez, Derren Brown's gorilla head, Harry Houdini's 'Bell Box', a sawing in half box and artefacts from psychology experiments. The exhibition had 175,000 visitors and 19,000 people participated in the live programme. Please see the gallery below for images from the exhibition (Photographs courtesy of Thomas Farnetti at Wellcome Collection.)

 

See an interview about the exhibition.