West Ham Festival exhibition

I will be exhibiting photographs from my Windows on the world series together with my Broken journey, fragmented story installation at All Saints West Ham from Thursday 16th June to Thursday 21st July, including the period of the West Ham Festival. See the All Saints website for church opening times.

Both pieces raise issues of perception and perspective. Broken journey, fragmented story features two discarded church noticeboards containing images and meditations from a sequence of Stations of the Cross and Resurrection (images by Henry Shelton, meditations by myself) which have been displayed, with omissions, in a random pattern that disrupts the agreed linear sequence of the Passion journey and narrative.

The Gospel story is rarely able to be told fully and in the way in which we might ideally wish to do so. What effect does this have on us, on those who hear the story told, and on the story itself? Is a story told in fragments disconnected and incoherent or do the fragments and omissions enable new insights and connections to be made? The installation therefore raises questions as to how this disruption of the usual sequence and story of the Stations makes viewers feel? What thoughts or reflections it prompts? What, if anything, it illustrates about the fragmented nature of our telling of the Christian story or the Gospel message in our culture and time? This fragmented set of Stations is displayed in a set of discarded church noticeboards; a means of communicating the ongoing life of Christ’s church and yet, in this instance, discarded. What does that say about the story and Stations displayed within this installation?

As each of us view life from our own perspective, each photograph in the Windows on the world series features a foreground object providing a frame for what can be viewed beyond. As there is always something beyond our immediate frame of reference, each photograph in the series features something that can be glimpsed beyond the foreground image. By framing what is beyond, the photograph acts as a window on a part of our world and at the same time signals the presence of the beyond, thereby also acting as a window onto the divine in a way similar to that achieved by icons.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Moby - The Day.