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Monday 7 May 2018

Artlyst: Bill Viola, Corita Kent & Katrina Moss

I have had three pieces published by Artlyst today. The first piece concerns St Cuthbert’s Church in Edinburgh (Kirk of the Castle Rock and Princes St Gardens) which is currently home to an outstanding video art installation by the internationally respected American artist Bill Viola.

'Located at the corner of Princes Street and Lothian Road under the watchful gaze of Edinburgh Castle, the silent, shadowy calm of this church provides an evocative location for work by an artist who consistently explores such universal human experiences as spirituality, birth, and death.'

The second piece previews the marvellous Corita Kent: Get With The Action exhibition at Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft:

'In the sometimes fraught and fractious relationship between the Church and visual art, the story of Sister Corita Kent is one of the most inspiring, surprising and unusual.

In 1936 the eighteen-year-old Frances Kent entered the religious order Immaculate Heart of Mary order of Catholic nuns in Hollywood. She became Sister Mary Corita, IHM, and revelled in the changing urban environment of post-World War II Los Angeles finding inspiration in signs and advertising for her vibrant screen-printed banners and posters. As early as 1952 her printmaking was recognised as best in show by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, but it was a visit in 1962 to the Ferus Gallery in LA to see Andy Warhol’s breakthrough exhibition of Campbell’s Soup Cans that transformed her practice. ‘Coming home,’ she said, ‘you saw everything like Andy Warhol’.

From that point on, she drew playfully on pop and modern consumer cultures in a unique calligraphic style that incorporated advertising images and slogans, popular song lyrics, biblical verses, and literature and addressed contemporary issues of poverty, racism and war by asking, ‘What would Jesus do?’'

The third piece is my latest interview for Artlyst, with Katrina Moss, founder of Chaiya Art Awards:

'I think spirituality is very important to many people, and there didn’t seem to be any major platforms where artists could explore this in their work and for that work to be seen in a high profile gallery. One artist emailed me saying “I have struggled to find people in the visual arts today who are interested in the subject of God. So as a young artist who has chosen to explore faith in my work, being a part of this has provided me with a great sense of hope and encouragement.”'

My other Artlyst articles and interviews are:
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Hothouse Flowers - Thing Of Beauty.

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