Exhibiting spirituality

It has been interesting to see the number of exhibitions recently which have explored some aspect of spirituality. Both the numbers and differing styles of exhibition would seem to indicate a renewed engagement within the art world with the force and mystery of spirituality.

Blood Tears Faith Doubt was an exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery curated by students which "confronted historic Christian art with contemporary art that continues to address the same visual tradition." The contemporary works selected allude to or depict religious imagery or practices but are ambiguous or ironic in their response therefore providing a strong contrast with works of devotion from a earlier age.

A similar questioning of received traditions can be found in Newspeak: British Art Now at the Saatchi Gallery and particularly in the stunning work of Ged Quinn. Quinn reproduces with great technical virtuosity works from the golden ages of classical, romantic and genre paintings but inserts within these compositions jarring contemporary images which undercut the arcadian images. Cake in the Wilderness depicts a cherry cake cut into a crucifix which is also the shape of the infamous Spandau prison while True Peace Will Prevail Under The Rule juxtaposes Claude Lorrain's depiction of Jacob, Rachel and Leah at the well with Mount Carmel, home of David Koresh's dissident religious community. By these means Quinn questions idealist images of faith and tradition in a way that challenges the honesty and veracity of religious image making.

Mark Wallinger's recent show at the Anthony Reynolds Gallery also questioned the substance of religion with the second of two sculptures meditating on the nature of selfhood. Richard Dorment described I Am Innocent as consisting:

"of two bigger-than-life-size reproductions of Velázquez’s portrait of Pope Innocent X shown back-to-back and revolving slowly from a cable attached to a motor in the ceiling. On one side, we see the portrait as Velázquez painted it, with the Pope on the left hand side; on the other, the portrait is reversed, so that he sits on the right."

Here we see, Dorment suggests, "a human being whose “I” is subsumed in the trappings of power."

However, despite the prevalence of ironic juxtaposition in a exhibition such as Newspeak, there have also been more positive responses to spirituality on show. The photographs of Leah Gordon at Riflemaker have much in common with those of Markéta Luskačová in Blood Tears Faith Doubt, in that both depict the poignant integrity with which those they photograph practice their faith and, through this, capture a sense of the sacred in the everyday.

Gordon writes that: "Photography has rarely been embraced as a form of representation by religions. It is as if photography with it's indelible relationship to the material could only serve to disprove the divine. Although when one reflects on its alchemical past it seems rooted in magical process." The work of both suggests that such attitudes should change.

Gordon's exhibition is called The Invisibles, a title which tallies with several of the abstract works on show in this year's Royal Academy Summer Exhibition such as The Unseen by Emma Biggs and Matthew Collings. In the same room is Jane Harris’s Divine which combines a golden comb-like oval framing a white void. The still harmonious parallels of this composition hide an infinite variety of brushstrokes when seen close-up; suggestive of the permanence and change contained within the divine.

Finally, the Summer Exhibition includes a commemorative display by the late Craigie Aitchison including several of his luminous Crucifixions while the Kings Place Gallery has a wonderful selection of landscape and religious works by the late Norman Adams (see above). With this latter exhibition, for once, a gallery's exhibition description seems entirely accurate:

"When Norman Adams died in March 2005, Britain lost one of the most significant artists to have emerged over the last half century. Spanning a career of almost sixty years, Adams’ art was essentially ecstatic and life affirming in its approach to nature and man’s place within it.
Drawn from the artist’s estate, the paintings and watercolours in this exhibition explore five decades of prolific output during the course of which Adams evolved an intensely original and personal style in which the poetical and Romantic landscape traditions of Blake and Turner are infused with the broader currents of European Modernism – Van Gogh and Ensor, Nolde and Picasso among others - to create one of the most deeply felt and emotionally intense expressions of the Northern Expressionist sensibility in late 20th Century British art."

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King Crimson - Starless And Bible Black.