A well-attended Private View last night saw lots of interest and engagement with the artworks featured in Art Below's Stations of the Cross exhibition at St Stephen Walbrook. In the course of the evening I said the following:
I am interested in putting art exhibitions into churches because I recognise that artists, in their work, are seeking to explore the big philosophical questions in life. Questions like, who am I, where am I, why am I here and is there a God? The Church is also exploring those same questions and, therefore, there is potential for real connection between the Church, artists and those viewing the art in exploring those questions. We won't all come to the same conclusions or even to any conclusions but exploring the questions and living the questions is a profoundly spiritual thing to do.
This exhibition has, as you will be aware, attracted criticism primarily focused on Ryan Callanan’s ‘Crucified Stormtrooper’. To bring an artwork like the Stormtrooper Crucifixion into a church enables us to see key aspects of the Christian faith in new ways because it challenges the traditional ways in which we picture Christ. Stormtroopers are on the dark side and that perception equates to the Christian belief that we are all sinners.
If we use the imagery opened up for us by the Stormtrooper Crucifixion, then we can reflect that we are all on the dark side. We are all stormtroopers. The amazing message of love at the heart of Christianity is that God does something about that situation. God becomes one of us in Christ. He becomes a stormtrooper in order that, through his death, he can take the darkness onto himself and enable us to live in the light. That is the heartbeat of Christianity, which is changing people's lives on a daily basis around the world and it is brought to us in a new way by including this artwork in this exhibition.
My reflection on the ‘Crucified Stormtrooper’ is unlikely to be what the artist intended when he made the piece. The concept of cross referencing is important in Callanan’s work, taking one item out of its context and splicing it with another to create something that feels familiar but whose meaning is subtly shifted, so he was probably primarily interested in juxtaposing incongruous images. But once he had put the stormtrooper on a cross, he made that reflection possible.
For us to show this work in a church enables that reflection on Christ's love to be seen and shared in a new way and that is why it worthwhile for the Church to show art, especially controversial art, and to explore the questions that it opens up to us all. To be quite frank, I would not be standing here talking to you about the love of God, if we were not showing this artwork in this church. If, as a Church, we don't engage with the world around us and the artists in it, then we have no future.
Callanan’s image can also get us wondering, as C.S. Lewis also did in his science fiction trilogy, whether, were other races to exist on other planets, Christ would be incarnated among those races in order to die for their salvation. Lewis’ view, which he sets out in the story running through the trilogy, is that Christ would do so. For Christians, Callanan's image can lead to a similar conclusion. Chris Clack’s ‘Descent with Gerbera’, as it depicts the descent from the cross as set on the moon, raises similar questions.
There isn’t time to talk about all the images in the exhibition, so I just wish to mention one more. Joseph Clarke has said of Paul Benney’s work that it ‘could be seen to continue the strong tradition of ‘British Mysticism’ championed by the likes of Samuel Palmer and William Blake.’ This is because he ‘shows us our lives as they balance on that fragile boundary between the perfectly ordinary and the profoundly otherworldly,’ seeking ‘to capture that mystery which redeems us from the mundane.’ In ‘Dying Slave’ we see a cruciform figure above a whirlpool. Christ walked on water in his ministry but, figuratively, was sucked under the waters in death. For Christians, baptism (going under the waters and emerging) is a symbol of Christ’s death and resurrection. In this piece, Benney can be understood as showing us the beginning of this redemptive process.
Chris Clack has said, “The 'Religious' is found in the least expected places.” What would be the impact, I wonder, were we more frequently, as has been done in this exhibition, take religious images out of their religious context and trust them to raise their questions and reveal their meanings in other landscapes, cultures and worlds?
This exhibition has been brought to St Stephen Walbrook by Art Below and Ben Moore in support of the Missing Tom Fund which raises money for the search for Ben’s older brother Tom who has been missing since 2003. I am pleased that this church can be part of that search by hosting this exhibition.
In this exhibition, Ben has gathered together images designed to provoke thought from artists grappling with their response to the challenge and scandal of Christ's cross. For Christians, these images can be commended as images that can open ideas and minds to new reflections on the eternal significance of Christ's sacrifice.
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Maria McKee - Life Is Sweet.
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