While I don’t feel in the least bit tired of life, I do recognise that, as I leave, there is an opportunity to look back and assess the way in which life, London, art and religion have been connected for me in that time. Nineteen of those years have been spent in ordained ministry during which I have sought to minister in and through the 4 Cs of culture, commerce, compassion, and congregation. I have been involved in initiating church-based art projects in the suburbs of East London and at central London churches such as St Martin’s. Cultural initiatives of which I have been part have included artist collectives, art trails, community art projects, exhibitions, festivals, installations, performances, projections, and workshops, while also writing regularly on the arts in London for mainstream and church publications.
I’m not, of course, the first to undertake such a review. ‘Visualising a Sacred City: London, Art and Religion’ appeared in 2017 claiming to be “the first major examination of the religious imaginary of this great metropolis through the prism of the visual arts.” I can’t compete with that but can provide an update, encapsulating, in part, the impact of a pandemic.
‘Visualising a Sacred City’ described a time in which those three – art, London and religion – got to “tease, play with, brush against, and energise one another.” The book provides a baseline from which to measure my experience. From 2000 onwards – the year in which 'Seeing Salvation: The Image of Christ' was staged at the National Gallery – for public galleries to talk about religion has ceased to be courageous and has become normative in a post-secular and multicultural space. The ground on which these three, play, tease, brush against and energise one another can be variously described as neutral, mutual and, even, holy. What art and religion offer to London, the book suggests, is a way of looking – attention to what is there – which “gives a certain humility to one’s views about what London should and must be” and leads to “shared views of what our habitations are and might be.”
London is home to one of the most ethnically diverse populations in the world. Not only a multicultural city, however, London is also a post-secular city where almost two-thirds of people identify as religious compared with 53% in the rest of UK. How has the relationship between art and religion been impacted by this demographic diversity and to what extent can London, as a result, be viewed as a case study for people going to church to see art, and – potentially - leaving with some religion? These are among the questions to which I have sought answers.
My ordained ministry in London has been bookended by public projection installations engaging with diversity locally and globally and, also, by commissions involving diverse images of Jesus and the disciples. In my curacy at St Margaret’s Barking, we worked with SDNA, a creative studio with a track record of animating galleries and public spaces with bold and imaginative displays to engage new and diverse audiences in fresh and exciting ways. At St Margaret’s, SDNA filmed people from the congregation and then digitally enhanced these images before projecting them onto the windows, roof and tower of the church. This project, called Abbey Happy, turned the church into a temporary artwork that was a blaze of light and colour with moving stained glass showing a diverse congregation at play. The project was part of an evening art trail, called Love & Light in the Town Centre which highlighted, through projections, significant heritage buildings and was organised by the local council through their Arts Services department with funding from the Arts Council.
Community engagement is a key measure for the success of such initiatives and that unlocked involvement for our church, as we were one of the few places locally where people from many of the diverse groups within the area’s population consistently gathered. That fact led to a wider involvement in the Council’s public arts programme including a photographic exhibition, the premiere of a film, and several art workshops.
The same year – 2005 – also saw the unveiling of an original painting commissioned for the Youth Chapel at St Margaret’s, as the climax to a Lent Course which explored images of salvation from conceptual art, figurative paintings, and feature films. Early in the morning was unveiled by the artist Alan Stewart and dedicated by the Bishop of Barking. The painting depicts Christ cooking breakfast for his disciples by Lake Galilee after his resurrection, as told in John 21. Stewart painted a black Christ surrounded by disciples of every ethnic origin to reflect the diverse congregation that worships at St Margaret's.
This image deliberately introduced a black Christ and a diverse collection of disciples into a church in which previously only images of white people were to be seen. The importance of addressing the injustice of that imbalance has been reinforced for me at several points in my ministry but was never more apparent than at the unveiling of this image when our black churchwarden broke down in tears at the sight of the painting.
I wrote an article for Artlyst in 2021 on the same issue, prompted by the National Gallery’s virtual exhibition (due to the pandemic) Sensing the Unseen: Step into Gossaert’s ‘Adoration’, and quoted theologian Robert Beckford who noted that, “Jesus is a man of colour from the ancient near east;” an olive-skinned Palestinian, not a blonde European. If that is so, we need to ask, as Beckford does, how then “did we make him an Aryan and use that image to oppress other people?” I concluded that we need those like Beckford and Benedict Thomas Viviano, who developed the theory that there were both men and women among the Magi, to arrive at a more historically accurate and theologically significant picture of the Magi’s visitation, which involves an inclusive group of Magi visiting a black Christ.
With that understanding, the incarnation and ‘Gentile Christmas’ reveal that God’s heart is on the edge of human society, with those who have been excluded; that God is most evidently encountered among those in the margins and on the edge. Those who have been rejected are then seen to be the energy and the life-force that will transform us all. The life of the church is, as Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, has noted, to be one of continually recognising the sin of how much we have rejected, and celebrating the grace that God gives us back what we once rejected to become the cornerstone of our lives.
More recently I have worked again with Alan Stewart to create a Last Supper that includes disabled people but is also an image in which everyone is invited to come to the table. This picture, with its image of a blind Jesus, was shown first at St Martin-in-the-Fields when it was used this year as an altarpiece at our Lenten Bread for the World Eucharist. The Blind Jesus (No-one belongs here more than you) is an image in charcoal of the Last Supper which includes the central character of a visually impaired Jesus, surrounded by twelve people of differing ages, backgrounds and abilities. An empty chair invites the viewer to find themselves at the table. This Jesus challenges theological and Biblical imagery of blindness as sin or something to be cured.
Stewart's marvellous drawing of the Last Supper gives us an ecumenical or catholic image of the Last Supper through its depiction of a diverse group of disciples surrounding a blind Jesus. This is an image of many who have experienced barriers to inclusion getting in and joining in, with the recognition that experiences of exclusion are central to a faith that sees Jesus become the scapegoat for humanity to remove barriers to encounter with God we had earlier erected. The Jesus who does so bears on his body the marks of his Passion, carrying those signs and experiences into an eternity of unity and communion. His experience of being scapegoated and excluded becomes revelatory and the route by which all can return to community.
In the same way, the experience of disabled people must also become central, as in this image, not through the eradication of disability by means of supernatural healing, but by the eradication of all barriers to communion, so that the insights of all can be received for the benefit and building up of the whole people of God. We need the vision of communion that Stewart shows us – one that Jesus institutes through the Eucharist, shares in parables of the Messianic banquet, and which will become our experience in eternity - in order that we begin to live that future now.
Among those most excluded in London are refugees and asylum seekers. In 2018, St Martin’s hosted Sam Ivin’s Lingering Ghosts exhibition which offered space to contemplate the often-underreported plight of those who wait for the possibility of asylum in a place of limbo, without work, with little money and in temporary accommodation. His exhibition was based on a simple idea, yet one which combines prophetic insight and emotive impact as it speaks truth to power. Ivin physically scratches portraits of asylum seekers erasing their eyes to convey the frustration engendered by the ‘hostile environment’ for migrants, which blights lives and erases the identities of those detained in its clutches. These modified portraits simply and powerfully enable us view the plight of those that wait for asylum.
In 2016, when I was also Priest-in-charge at St Stephen Walbrook in the City of London, Michael Takeo Magruder created a digital installation Lamentation for the Forsaken which juxtaposed the sufferings of the Syrian peoples, including refugees, in our own day with the death of Christ. Takeo evoked the memory of Syrians who had passed away in the conflict by weaving their names and images into a contemporary Shroud of Turin. In this way he reminded us that Christ's death is symptomatic of all suffering throughout time. His work offered “a lamentation not only for the forsaken Christ, but others who have felt his acute pain of abandonment.”
Lamentation for the Forsaken was the 13th Station in a public art project that sought to use the story of the Passion to prompt reflection and action in response to challenges of social justice. Drawing upon the traditional Christian practice of walking and praying the fourteen Stations of the Cross, this project - which began in London in 2016 and has been replicated in Washington DC, New York City, Amsterdam, Deventer, Online, and Toronto - is designed to engage people of all faiths and none. In each city that hosts the project, a team of curators design a bespoke route with fourteen stops, creating a form of contemporary pilgrimage marked by works of art, old and new. The journey weaves through both sacred and secular sites, and often breaks down the boundaries between these categories.
Art trails also provide a marvellous way to encourage visitors to engage with the diversity of art found in many churches, and open to all the spirituality inherent in such art. In 2017, I was involved in the launch of The Art of Faith, a self-guided walk around the City of London, a location containing the greatest concentration of historic churches anywhere in the UK. What is less well known is the extent to which they contain significant examples of art commissioned from the 20th century onwards.
Many of the churches in the City were damaged by bombing during World War II, providing opportunities in the post-war reconstruction to engage with contemporary art. Artworks included in the trail are by prominent modern artists such as Jacob Epstein, Patrick Heron, Damien Hirst, Henry Moore, and Bill Viola, as well as work by other reputable artists such as Thetis Blacker, John Hayward, Keith New and John Skeaping. By encouraging viewers to treat such trails prayerfully as though on pilgrimage, art trails enable visitors to uncover moments where the sacred inhabits the ordinary. Seeking silence and stillness in the busyness of the City is a spiritual exercise that all can explore, whether religious or of no faith. This is particularly so, where each artwork is accompanied by a reflection to help viewers engage spiritually and practically with stillness and prayer.
Deepening faith with the Arts has been a key aspect of the ministry of St Martin-in-the-Fields for many years including initiatives such as Great Sacred Music and annual Passion and Nativity Plays. ‘Inspired to Follow: Art and the Bible Story’ is a discipleship course which uses fine art paintings from the National Gallery (on St Martin’s doorstep), a Biblical story and a short theological reflection, as springboards to help explore Christian faith today. The course was designed by Alastair McKay, with input from the wider clergy team, while he was a curate at St Martin’s. Alastair says: “What people love about the course is engaging with a single visual image over the course of each session, in conversation with others, in the light of some initial reflections about us and God. Different people see different things within a painting, as they do within a Bible story. And they connect what they observe to their lives, in diverse ways.” ‘Inspired to Follow’ developed a new life online during the pandemic and became a much-valued source of inspiration and ideas for many during lockdown.
More recently, St Martin’s has supported the National Gallery in creating an Interfaith Sacred Art Network in London. This began with the theme of Crossing Borders, inspired through two paintings by Orazio Gentileschi: The National Gallery’s The Finding of Moses, and The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, loaned to the National Gallery by Birmingham Museums Trust. The network began with a symposium featuring a wonderfully diverse array of talks on sacred texts, opportunities to view the paintings together, a special service at St Martin’s, and a dinner to celebrate the formation of the new network. In the paper I presented, I suggested that Gentileschi’s decisions regarding the gender and class of those depicted provide an interpretive crux relating to the arc of the story as it bends towards liberation. Drawing parallels between the liberation found in the Exodus and experiences of the English Revolution that began shortly after the creation of Gentileschi’s painting, I suggested that the painting gestures towards the future crossing of boundaries in relation to gender and class without realising them fully in the present.
As with T.S. Eliot, in my end is my beginning. I began with a projection installation and end with another, this time at St Martin’s. Fields of Vision was an immersive exterior projection created by Marcus Lyon. The work, which covered the whole church façade at its East End, explored concepts of freedom, service and community in our modern world through oral histories, large scale portraits and ancestral DNA mapping, with music by Brian Eno. The piece wove together the narratives of 28 extraordinary individuals from across the globe - changemakers chosen by their own communities - to tell a deeper story of our interdependence and the extraordinary power of collaboration.
Lyons’ Human Atlas projects, on which Fields of Vision was based, are social impact art projects that bring together a specified number of nominated change agents to tell a deeper story about how we self-author and co-author a more hopeful future through portraits, interviews, soundscapes and DNA mapping. The DNA mapping highlights the vital part migration plays in human civilisation and community. Lyons’ i.Detroit Human Atlas project, for example, involved collating 1,202 pieces of information over the course of two years, including the ancestral DNA of 100 individuals from Detroit, yet with 91 places of origin, and maps of migration journeys out of Africa that date back thousands of years.
In these ways, exploring London’s diversity affectively and engagingly through the visual arts in the context of faith has involved community engagement, partnership working, creation of inclusive images, explorations of current social issues, attractional events, and pilgrimage style trails. These have drawn new groups to churches and have enabled other agencies to engage with diverse congregations. Being with and paying attention to those on the edge while involving such groups in art projects has also been key, as has working across a range of different media and approaches. Migration has been central to London’s diversity, multi-culturalism, and post-secular identity, so engaging creatively, constructively, imaginatively and theologically with this issue has been at the heart of this survey; an approach that has been counter-cultural in a time when the UK has been a hostile environment for migrants.
Attending to the many ways in which public galleries now discuss art and religion, while taking opportunities to form partnerships has also enabled creative reach. Art trails and digital projects in particular have connected sacred and secular spaces, dissolving some boundaries between both in the process. Projection installations in particular inhabit the public square. Such interactions provoke new conversations - conducted with humility - concerning what London should and must be and also what our habitations – temporal and eternal - are and might be. As a visitor to an exhibition held at St Stephen Walbrook once noted, churches are extraordinary places for such extraordinarily broad-minded, human and thought-provoking exhibitions to be held. It is the thought-provoking nature of these interactions which open the already religious to the wonder of art and the non-religious to the possibility of faith.
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Ricky Ross - London Comes Alive.
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