The Beckoning

The work’s lurid colour palette borrows from The Wicker Man’s contemporary counterpart, Ari Aster’s Midsommar, 2019. In this film, American outsiders visit the remote Swedish community of the Hårga and the horror unfolds in the bright sunshine that blankets the idyllic setting for nearly 24 hours a day.

Ominous motifs are found throughout The Beckoning Blade. The lost child, the rot in the yield, the hare (the latter with an artful title: The Lurker at Dusk). In Comes I visually references the mystical power of three, recognisable as the ancient symbol of the triskelion seen in the flag of the Isle of Man. Its title borrows from a Mummers’ play (folk plays performed by troupes of amateur actors, traditionally all male) performed at Winter Solstice to stimulate change and beckon in the new season, which opens with an actor barging into a room shouting the titular cry. Much like a scarecrow’s form is built from farm implements stuffed into clothing, Robinson creates her anthropomorphised performer from a scythe blade cloaked in two smocked arms – or more unsettlingly, running legs.

A film is nothing without its soundtrack, and The Wicker Man has been referred to as a musical for the way songs, written and performed by Paul Giovanni and Magnet, are woven through the narrative. Robinson compliments her folk horror by engaging fiction writer Sean Williams to produce Nine Lullabies, poems – or songs – of his own invention, printed and bound by Damien Warman and offered to the audience.

As an artist living in Australia, Robinson is separated from the homeland of her British ancestry and her practice has been shaped by research into European history and literature, particularly the naturalistic and pagan rituals of folk culture and the ways they are translated into folk horror. In this way, Robinson is the knowledgeable outsider while her audience is positioned as the unassuming visitor who will either embrace the community’s ways, or glance at every sharp blade, unusual act, and unfamiliar object with suspicion, and whose distrust will only lead to a grisly end.

Perhaps the most enticing element of folk horror is the intoxicating potential of the collective. Sitting as an exclamation point to The Beckoning Blade is Sunspurge, 13 interlock- ing sleeves forming the imagery of a sun. The dip-dyed linen turns from bright straw-yellow to royal purple, mimicking the vivid colours worn by Lord Summerisle during the island’s portentous May Day festivities. The many arms evoke the unified movements in folk dancing, particularly the Maypole dance, and the way performing the same motions together can induce a shared experience. In Midsommar the Hårga wail, moan and thrash their bodies in expression of the pleasure and pain of their fellows. The end point of The Wicker Man sees the community of Summerisle perform a gruesome act in unison, their burden lightened by their numbers. As this scene signals the climax of the film, so too does the setting sun gesture towards finality. Nature’s most keenly observed cycle comes to an end, and we await it to begin again.