The Artist

Raym Richards
BA(Hons) Fine Art
Leeds, UK. 1975

Raym is best known in Australia as an artist for his work as the founder of the Melbourne based Performance Art group “Primary Source”, which created large scale public performances (The Ship, City Blocks, Sisyphus, The Sphere and Big Words) for the Melbourne, Sydney and Perth International Festivals in the early 90’s.

His work also came to public attention in the mid 80’s after his arrest during a performance, which the then Director of the National Gallery of Victoria, Patrick McGaughey described as “…new ritual…” The charge of obscenity (for appearing naked) was dropped after testimony from Patrick, the Lord Mayor of Melbourne and other notables present at the performance.

Raym also presented a series of performances with DDart in the National Gallery of Victoria as a special guest artist, whilst artist in residence at Philip Institute of Technology in 1982.

Prior to that he had been creating pieces of public performance art in Britain and Europe since 1971.

By the early nineties Raym’s work as a performance artist led him into creating ceremony for its own sake, regardless of the presence of any spectators or audience. This in turn led to an in depth exploration of shamanism and sacred ceremony, ceremony that our modern Western culture has lost touch with. 

His awakening as a shaman and facilitator of altered states for others changed his life profoundly.

Over the past twenty-five years Raym has created many sacred ceremonies for small and large groups, both alone and with other indigenous and non indigenous shamans. He has published three books on shamanism and has personally facilitated over 6,000 individual shamanic journeys for clients.

His shamanic, drug-free, Crystal Dreaming™ process is taught worldwide, has over 600 practitioners and has positively affected many thousands of people. 

Raym is a twenty-first century shaman, a teacher of teachers, spiritual healer, author, columnist, Master of Ceremonies and Performance Artist. He lives in the hinterland of Byron Bay, Northern NSW, Australia.