Tyler Mellins (b. 1995, Mansfield, UK) is an artist based in Sheffield, UK.
He makes work that explores how people interact with information in a post-truth world, examining ways that meaning can be formed, documented and shared. Drawing on his magickal practice and his experience as a paranormal investigator, he is interested in alternative belief systems wherein meaning is disputable, obsolete, or otherwise unverifiable via the scientific method.
He works primarily with moving image, as well as text, photography, sculpture, and performance; installations combining these varied media allow him to address the (im)materiality of his subject matter and bridge disparate worlds or ideas. The making process is open to divine intervention, using automatic writing, crystal-gazing, and other forms of divination as creative stimuli.
Informed by Jungian psychoanalysis, his work positions magickal thinking and paranormal investigation as modes of exploring the unconscious mind. He aims to create spaces for active imagining beyond scientific reason, and to encourage viewers to question any and all information they are exposed to.
With the support of Arts Council England and Freelands Foundation, he is currently developing a new body of work exploring ‘instrumental transcommunication’; the practice of using technology to communicate with spirits of the dead. The work draws influence from the writing of Mark Fisher and Jeffrey Sconce, the work of Susan Hiller, and the research of parapsychologist Konstantin Raudive.
He is currently based at Yorkshire Artspace and graduated from the MFA programme at Sheffield Institute of Arts in 2019.