My Greenbelt 2012 journal (4)

Monday 27^th August

 

The sense of peace from last night holds for me and my final day is less working issues through and more simply enjoyable, particularly as I catch up with friends from church.

John Schad gave a reading from his novel ‘The Late Walter Benjamin’ that being well dramatised heightened his wonderfully interesting and creative take on Benjamin’s life and writings. ‘We penetrate mystery,’ Benjamin said, ‘only to the degree that we recognize it in the everyday world.’ ‘Every second was the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter’

This was followed Deborah Fielding on reading and writing short stories. Fielding gave us a personal and eclectic presentation with readings of, quotes about, and hints and tips on the writing of short stories. Read other writer’s short stories then just do it were the main messages that emerged. Her chapbooks combine art, design and narrative in one compendium, always a fascinating combination.

Sessions from Anthony Green and Simone Lia enabled me to finally get the exhibition in the Gallery. The initially unrecognised issue for me with this exhibition has been that the organisers have chosen to show work which break two standard lines in regard to contemporary art. The first is that narrative art is merely illustrative and, therefore, second rate. The second is that it is professional suicide for visual art to be explicit about Christian faith. Each of the artists included here, in different ways, are explicitly narrative (often confessional) Christian artists and within the mainstream art world. This is something to be celebrated but shouldn’t solely apply to those who can make it work in the mainstream art world. Instead, artists such as these should be inspiration for others who also aim to be explicitly confessional or narrative Christian artists but do not have similar standing within the mainstream art world. This exhibition may be a helpful development in affording equal understanding and support to these artists as for those whose vision is to address issues of faith through allusion and elusively.

Having recognised this doesn’t ultimately change my reaction to the work itself. Green, as he eloquently explained in his presentation, paints his life as a petit histoire recognising that to do so sanctifies ordinary life. In doing so, as an ex-Slade student, he would seem to be following in the footsteps of Stanley Spencer. It seems to me that Green’s work, wonderful as it undoubtedly is, has similar weaknesses to that of Spencer when the ordinary aspects of life being celebrated are so personal that a family history is required in order to fully appreciate or understand the imagery. Which brings us back to the standard critique of narrative art – which I think can be applied to Green’s Resurrection – that the work does not stand alone but needs literary explanation. Lia’s worm paintings don’t have this problem but, unlike her graphic novels, seem slight and ephemeral as images. Leunig, by contrast, provides a masterclass in single images which are both simply designed and drawn yet possess real pathos and depth.

Green did, in his talk, eloquently and forcefully emphasise the sanctify of ordinary life and each of us as ordinary people. My resolution of my own issues over this weekend has partly been though accepting the value of ordinary ministry and also the tensions and stretch that come from straddling several different areas of ministry with the risk that none are done as well as they might but also with the potentiality for creativity which comes from the attempt. 

Bellowhead, in their headlining set, played with a spirit of wild abandon that was based on disciplined familiarity with each other and their sources and which therefore provided something more than the acts who preceded them could deliver. Aradhna, who I heard again earlier in the day, also, it seems to me, possess this something more that comes from an ability to inhabit and then transcend the spirit of your sources.

In the tension of the now and not yet,

between order and disintegration,

between anarchy and regimentation,

in between, the broken middle,

the crack where the light gets in,

is the edge of chaos where life evolves,

where change occurs not free of cost –

ragged edges, blind alleys, the snake in Eden –

evolution into consciousness, falling up.

The edge of chaos

is order and disorder,

movement and stasis,

unity and fragmentation,

paradox and mystery

bringing change, development,

creativity, growth and mutation.

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

Aradhna - Namaste Saté.