Tommy Angel #8 (2006) / Tommy Angel #10 (2006)

Jonathan Allen is a London-based visual artist and writer whose work has featured in exhibitions in the UK and internationally since the early 1990’s. Allen’s diverse artistic practice explores the articulation of belief, knowledge, and creative agency within contemporary secular culture, with many of his most recent projects drawing from the history and rhetoric of theatrical, or 'secular' magic. His performance alter-ego Tommy Angel, a unredeemed and unredeeming 'gospel magician' was described as 'Billy Graham meeting David Copperfield via Donald Rumsfeld.'

Magic Shop (2002) neon

Recent group exhibitions include Mesmer at temporarycontemporary, So You're Afraid Of What? at Redux Gallery, London, Variety at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea, UK (2005), The Dictionary of War, Berlin (2007), and The Great Transformation at Frankfurt Kunstverein (2008).

Tommy Angel performed in 2004 for the opening of the Hayward Gallery's Eyes, Lies and Illusions, for ZOO Art Fair in 2005, and for Duckie, with whom he performed in 2006 at Tate Britain, London. Allen's work was exhibited in the first Singapore Biennale Sept-Nov 2006. He has recently guest-edited Issue 26 of New-York-based art and culture quarterly Cabinet.

His second solo exhibition at David Risley Gallery, London KALANAG (2007-8) drew upon conjuring's interstice with fascism through an exploration of the work of German magician Helmut Schreiber, Adolf Hitler's notorious 'minister of magic'. Tommy Angel was exhibited at David Risley Gallery in 2006.

Jonathan Allen was the Arts Council England Helen Chadwick Fellow 2007-2008 University of Oxford and the British School at Rome. With the writer Sally O'Reilly, he is currently co-curating 'Magic Show' a Hayward Gallery Touring Exhibition that tours five UK venues from 2009-2010.

Tank Museum from Second Truths (1998)