In 1923, the year the British artist Ithell Colquhoun turned 17, she read a story about Aleister Crowley’s spiritual center in Sicily, a strange place called the Abbey of Thelema. It was a global center of magical devotion—an “anti-monastery”—and the devotees lived according to their own principles of pleasure, indulging in orgies and opium. Colquhoun remained a part of the occult during her studies at London’s Slade School of Art. After she established a studio in Paris in 1931, she befriended the Surrealists André Breton, Roland Penrose, and Salvador Dalí; in 1940, she was expelled from the group due to her religious beliefs. Colquhoun made art in the Surrealist vein until her death, in 1988. A big show on the artist is coming up at the Tate St. Ives, but for now you can see Colquhoun’s seductive, at times sinister work at Ben Hunter. —Elena Clavarino