Exhibitions, resources and artists update

News first of two artists with which I worked while at St Stephen Walbrook:

Stations of the Cross 2020 is a development of Stations 2017, updated for such a time as this, with video works by Mark Dean, and new readings via Zoom (the social distancing medium of the moment) by friends of Arts Chaplaincy Projects, including NHS & Royal Mail workers from the front line, and those working from home, including artists, educators, therapists and priests, remotely recorded on Maundy Thursday. A new video for the 15th Station, made in collaboration with Lizzi Kew Ross & Co, will be posted below on Easter Day. Updated commentaries on the video works written by curator Lucy Newman Cleeve are available here. 

Hannah Rose Thomas has been interviewed for Impossible Beauty. Hannah has completed her MA at the Prince’s School of Traditional Art in London and has also studied at the Florence Academy of Art and the Russian Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. Hannah has found a way to integrate her art and humanitarian work, largely painting portraits of those whom have been persecuted. She desires to use art as a tool for advocacy, bringing a voice to the voiceless into places of influence in the West. She has organized art projects in Jordan with Syrian refuges, with Yezidi women in Northern Iraq who had escaped ISIS captivity, with Rohingya children in refugee camps on the Myanmar border, and with survivors of Boko Haram and Fulani violence in Northern Nigeria.

The Visual Commentary on Scripture (VCS) is a freely accessible online publication that provides theological commentary on the Bible in dialogue with works of art. For Holy Week 2020, VCS has been sharing an exhibition a day every day from Palm Sunday to Easter, exploring Bible passages relevant to that day. Each has been accompanied by a short introductory reflection by VCS Director, Professor Ben Quash. My VCS exhibition entitled 'Back from the Brink' can also be viewed by clicking here.

The National Gallery has an online exploration of the story of Christ's Passion. Click here to discover the story of the Passion, as told through paintings in the National Gallery Collection. Continue to reflect with ‘Inspired to Follow: Art and the Bible Story’, a free resource to help people explore the Christian faith, using paintings and Biblical story as the starting points. It’s been created by St Martin-in-the-Fields in partnership with the National Gallery.

Logos was an exhibition of abstract paintings by David Wojkowicz in galerieCM at the First Republic Central Church of the Evangelical Methodist Church in the heart of Prague. The church opens its spaces to artists whose work is the spark of the Holy Spirit, who will revive their spaces and inspire those who come. Wojkowicz's paintings are inspired by the Bible and biblical theology. His goal is to illustrate both well-known and lesser-known verses and entire stories from all of the Scriptures. The paintings are created on a computer using graphic vector software. The paintings are made using a method that he invented and are the result of the blending of at least seven similar (or dissimilar) images.

Roman Barabakh’s The Origins at IconArt in Prague was an attempt by the artist to record his own experiences around the theme of creation. Taking the image of an Old Testament passage about the Creation of the World, Barabakh built his own seven-day photo story. Through his use of metaphorical depictions, Barabakh tries to reimagine familiar ideas and concepts from scripture. Here, these concepts are visualised through the medium of photography.

The mission of Iconart contemporary sacred art gallery is to exhibit, collect and make available for sale sacred icon art of contemporary artists from different regions of Ukraine. Iconart opened in Lviv, Ukraine on February 14, 2010 with an icon exhibition of the work of Ivanka Krypyakevych-Dymyd called “Between the Nativity and the Resurrection. The Icon and Around It”. Since its inception, the gallery has introduced visitors to the best examples of current religious Icon paintings of artists from the Lviv region, including the work of Petro Gumenyuk, Ivanka Krypyakevych-Dymyd, Oksana Romaniv-Triska, Lyuba Yatskiv, young creators Danylo Movchan, Natalya Rusetska, Ostap Lozynsky, along with representatives of other Ukrainian schools of sacred art, such as Oleksandr Antonyuk, Andriy Kovalenko, and Olga Kovtun.

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Michael McDermott - Carry Your Cross.