You probably haven’t heard of Georgiana Houghton. And if you saw the artist’s work, you probably wouldn’t guess when it was made. An important figure of the early Spiritualist movement in Victorian England, Houghton, who lived from 1814 to 1884, was a very early abstract artist, though she called her work “spirit paintings.” Recently “rediscovered” by the art world, Houghton is said to have shown her nonfigurative watercolors in London in 1871, three years before the first Impressionist exhibition took place in Paris. Spiritualism purports to communicate with the spirits of the deceased. Houghton used painting as her medium. She claimed that her hand did not move on its own, but with the guidance of various individuals, including family members and Renaissance artists such as Titian. Presenting this exhibition alongside a Wassily Kandinsky show, the Art Gallery of New South Wales displays the important role Spiritualism played in early modernism. —Jeanne Malle