Wikio - Top Blogs - Religion and belief

Wednesday 8 August 2007

Public Art event & Art Exhibition

The four drawer cabinet that I shall be customising and decorating

From 1st to 7th October 2007 St John's Seven Kings will stage a public art event and exhibition as part of our Patronal Festival. The public arts event will lead up to the Patronal Festival, running from 1st to 5th October, with the exhibition taking place over the Patronal Festival weekend (5th - 7th October)

For the public arts event I will be customising and decorating a four drawer cabinet in the St John's Parish Centre. This project will involve photomontages, constructions, and paintings to create a piece of conceptual sculpture that will be exhibited at St John's throughout our Patronal Festival weekend. I will be working publically on the piece during the mornings and evenings of 1st to 5th October and there is an open invitation to view the development of the piece and leave comments about the work and the project. Comments can also be left on this blog and, while working on the project, I will aim to update the blog daily with progress on the project. The project will be documented photographically by the artist, Rodney Bailey.

Rodney and I will jointly exhibit paintings in St John's Church and Centre over the Patronal Festival weekend (5th-7th October). The exhibition will also feature the newly created piece of conceptual sculpture. On the evening of Friday 5th October there will be an opening night reception for the exhibition during which Rodney's photographs and public reaction to the public art project will be displayed. I will also perform meditations and display images from my In Between collaboration with my friend, artist and writer, Revd. Alan Stewart.

Rodney trained in Visual Arts and Design and Public Art at Chelsea College. His work is concerned with identity, communication and the difficulties we face in communicating our identity and nature to each other in a respectful and sincere way. In his work he hopes to give the audience an aspect of himself that is normally hidden from view. Rodney works in a variety of media and styles. His work can be viewed in Central London this autumn as part of the Eye Play exhibition at Bankside Gallery from 29th August to 9th September 2007.

Rodney is a District Leader with the Buddhist organisation Soka Gakkai International (which means 'Value Creating Society'). He practices the Buddhism of Nichiren Daishonin and seeks through SGI to build bridges through dialogue and cultural exchange. An interesting aspect of the collaboration between Rodney and I will be the dialogue between our two sets of beliefs. Rodney's link with St John's is that he is the son of one of the Churchwardens and came to services as a child.

Other events and activities during the St John's Patronal Festival include a coffee morning and quiz night on Saturday 6th October and the Patronal Festival service (10am, with Area Dean Revd. Rosemary Enever) and Choral Evensong (6.30pm, with the combined choirs of St John's and St Peter's Aldborough Hatch) on Sunday 7th October.

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