Art Starter: The Gangsters Ball

“WOW! How far back do you want to go?” is Shane Hill's immediate response when I confess ignorance about hypnotism and mentalism. “Hypnosis has been used possibly since ancient times,” he explains, “Egyptian priests used it to convince the masses of things, but our modern history has it really starting medically about WWII when it was used to help wounded soldiers during battles. Mentalism however really came into the fore I guess back with the spiritualist movement in the 1800s, when people like the Fox sisters and others used the rudimentary form of psychological magic to fool people that they were either having their minds read or that they were talking to Uncle Harry or Aunt May from the spirit world.

“Hypnotism and mentalism are very different,” Hill reveals. ”Hypnosis has a scientific background – research is done on it constantly – doctors dentists and other professional use it, there have even been cases of the police using it, to enhance witnesses memory of a crime. Mentalism on the other hand is entertainment, even though the basic principle is the same; a good understanding of the human mind and how it ticks. For example both hypnosis and mentalism rely to some degree on the mind's ability to focus. If in hypnosis I can get you to focus on me, and what I'm saying, you will drop into a trance – in fact we do this when we are watching TV. In mentalism however I might want you to focus not on me and what I'm doing but on something else.

“I've been screwing about with this work since he was a kid,” he explains of a skill that has become his polished comic art form. “My ability to convince almost anybody of anything appeared pretty early, I once made my sisters – I have five – convinced that our house had disappeared.“