"A major new memorial installation of two original sculptures by internationally acclaimed artist, Gerry Judah (b.1951), has been erected as part of St Paul’s Cathedral’s programme to commemorate the 2014 centenary of the beginning of the Great War (1914 - 1918).
The two white cruciform sculptures, each over six metres high, have been installed on the walls at the head of the Nave of the Cathedral and will meet visitors upon entry to St Paul’s for an eight month period from Palm Sunday onwards (13th April 2014). Bearing intricate models of contemporary and historical settlements decimated by conflict on the main shafts, the two crosses encourage reflection on the waste, pity and devastation of war, whilst also instilling a sense of hopefulness and a desire for peace in the viewer.
Reflecting on the project, Gerry Judah remarks: “It is a great honour to have been selected to create these two new works as part of the World War I commemorations at St Paul’s Cathedral, a building that has historically come to symbolise the triumph of hope and redemption in the face of conflict. These sculptures are intended to appeal to our feelings of pity and charity, as well as filling us with hope for the future, which, I feel, is one of the principal purposes of a great place of worship, contemplation and meditation such as St Paul’s.”
The Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, The Reverend Canon Mark Oakley, comments: “Gerry Judah’s striking sculptures confront us with the reality of a War that saw thousands and thousands of young people from around the world buried with white crosses and stones over their remains. They also provoke us into interrogating the present world and the landscapes we casually view on the news every day, as scarred and agonised by military hate as the hearts and minds of those who survive. Gerry’s work ruptures the symmetry of the Cathedral just as war breaks down human harmony. Placed where they are, we are invited to walk through them, and the failure and pain they represent, into a sacred space of hope where people in all our diversity are invited to come together to worship, to respect and to learn from each other. It is a work that starkly asks of us what it must now mean for us to be loyal to our shared future.”
I reviewed an exhibition by Gerry Judah in 2007 for Art and Christianity and said of his work then, "In Judah's work, shocking content - the ruins of human habitation devoid of human life - is combined with the sensuous interplay of light and shadow on the delicacy and detail of Judah's constructions of destruction."
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Athlete - Black Swan.
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