Between: May 2023

Wednesday, 31 May 2023

Artlyst: Ai Weiwei - The Artist of Resistance - The Design Museum

My latest exhibition review for Artlyst is about Ai Weiwei: Making Sense and Yinka Ilori: PARABLES FOR HAPPINESS at the Design Museum:

'Ai is the artist of resistance and resilience par excellence. For him, conceptual art and ‘readymades’ have become a way of life because art has become his way of responding to oppression. For him, art has become more than creative expression and a career; art has become his worldview and default response to each and every circumstance of oppression he has faced personally because he has consistently chosen to make art from those experiences ...

Elsewhere in the Design Museum, we can also encounter the work of Yinka Ilori, who makes good use of the phrase, ‘Love always wins’. Ilori has a background in the Pentecostal church and, like Lakwena Mciver, another contemporary artist whose church experience shows up in her work, uses vibrant colour, strident patterns and positive slogans to fashion murals that inspire.'

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -

Monthly diary articles -

Articles/Reviews -

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The Amazons - Dark Visions.

Support and strengthening in difficulties

Here's the reflection I shared at St Andrew's Wickford this morning on the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary:

Mary was an obscure young Jewish girl who became one of the most important figures in the global faith that is Christianity. She and Elizabeth were caught up in events with revolutionary implications and this was far from easy. “Behind Elizabeth and Zechariah's joy at the birth of their son John was the knowledge that they had lost an inconsolably long number of years to enjoy watching him grow up.” “At the edge of Gabriel's annunciation was the social stress that Mary would endure in a society where it was all about your embedded role in the community.” She was not believed, either by those closest to her and those who didn’t really know her. Engaged to Joseph when the annunciation occurred, as she was found to be with child before they lived together, Joseph planned to dismiss her quietly. He had his own meeting with Gabriel which changed that decision but, if the man to whom she was betrothed, could not believe her without angelic intervention, then it would be no surprise if disbelief and misunderstanding characterised the response to Mary wherever she went. And “lurking over Joseph's shoulder was the gossip that would nag him all his life, that he is merely the putative father of Jesus.” (W. David O. Taylor - http://artspastor.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/the-annunciation-really-weird-story.html)

The anthropologist Daniel Miller was quoted in ‘The Big Issue’ as saying that “Christmas is a festival that aims to make the family not just sacred but an idiom for society more generally, including the local community or neighbourhood but also the national family.” In Britain, he suggests, “we place considerable emphasis on re-establishing a version of the domestic at Christmas time, rediscovering a certain sentimentality for this idealised version of family life.” The article then notes that, of course, “this rose-tinted vision is a world away from the reality many people live through at Christmas” because we do not enjoy “such an idealised family festival.”

However, if we were to grasp the unconventional and non-idealised relationships which God chose to reveal himself and be incarnated through the birth of Jesus – a conception outside of marriage, a relationship on the brink of divorce, a foster-father, a birth in cramped and crowded circumstances, an immediate threat to life followed by refugee status – we might then understand the reality of incarnation; of God with us in the reality, not the ideality, of our lives.

Bearing all this in mind, we can imagine how much Mary needed the moment of empathy and inspiration described in today’s Gospel reading (Luke 1.39-56) because the experience of being the God-bearer involved such difficulty. We can imagine how important it was to her to be with a relative who not only believed her but was also partway through her own miraculous pregnancy. The relief that she would have felt at being believed and understood would have been immense and then there is the shared moment of divine inspiration when the Holy Spirit comes on them, the babe in Elizabeth’s womb leaps for joy, and as Elizabeth blesses Mary, Mary is inspired to sing the Magnificat. In the face of so much disbelief and lack of support, this confirmation that they were both following God’s will, would have been overwhelming.

We can learn much from Mary’s faith, trust and persistence in the face of disbelief, misunderstanding and probable insult. We can also learn from this moment when God gives her both human empathy through Elizabeth and divine inspiration through the Holy Spirit to be a support and strengthening in the difficulties which she faced as God-bearer. Our own experience in times of trouble and difficulty will be similar as, on the one hand, God asks to trust and preserve while, on the other, he will provide us with moments of support and strengthening.

Malcolm Guite, in his sonnet for the Feast of the Visitation, captures well the miraculous reversal of expectations that occurred in the story of Mary and Elizabeth:

Here is a meeting made of hidden joys
Of lightenings cloistered in a narrow place
From quiet hearts the sudden flame of praise
And in the womb the quickening kick of grace.
Two women on the very edge of things
Unnoticed and unknown to men of power
But in their flesh the hidden Spirit sings
And in their lives the buds of blessing flower.
And Mary stands with all we call ‘too young’,
Elizabeth with all called ‘past their prime’
They sing today for all the great unsung
Women who turned eternity to time
Favoured of heaven, outcast on the earth
Prophets who bring the best in us to birth.

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Malcolm Guite and Steve Bell - The Singing Bowl.

Sunday, 28 May 2023

Windows on the world (427)

London, 2023

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Ben Okafor - Man Of Sorrows.

The Holy Spirit is desire in us

Here's the sermon that I shared this morning at St Mary's Runwell and St Chad's Vange:

What is it that you most desire? How would you answer that question? It could be another person that you desire; your current or a future partner. You might answer in terms of other relationships; time with children or grandchildren, for example. It might be money that you desire; a lottery win would do very nicely and give you wealth to do with as you please. You might answer in terms of opportunity; the chance to travel or to enjoy particular types of experiences. Some might answer in terms of dreams; the chance to make a difference in the world, be famous for 15 minutes or to prove they have the X Factor.

Some years ago I was at a conference on ‘The Holy Spirit in the World Today’ where the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, said that the Holy Spirit is desire in us. He didn’t, of course, mean that the Spirit is any or all desires that animate us but instead a very particular desire; the desire, longing or yearning or passion for Christ and to become Christ-like. The challenge of the Archbishop’s homily was that we should be consumed with desire for that goal. He quoted St Symeon who prayed "Come, you who have become yourself desire in me, who have made me desire you, the absolutely inaccessible one!"

The desire that the Holy Spirit creates in us is a desire to be where Jesus is; in relationship with God the Father, in the stream of healing love which flows from the Father to the Son. In other words to know ourselves to be members of God’s family, brothers and sisters of Jesus, loved and accepted by God as his children and longing to grow up into the likeness of our brother Jesus, who is the image of the invisible God. When we are where Jesus is; in relationship with God the Father then we are able to use the same words and pray the same prayer as Jesus who called God, “Abba” or Daddy. This is the place of intimate relationship with God, this is what it means to be in God and it is the Holy Spirit who stirs up the desire in us to be in that place where we are able rightly and truly to speak intimately with our “Abba” Father.

By stirring up this desire in us, Graham Tomlin has suggested, the Holy Spirit provides the answer to one of the most fundamental questions of existence; the question of identity. We ask ‘Who are we?’ and the Spirit answers, we are beloved sons and daughters of the Father because the spirit has united us to Christ that we might live forever in the love that the Father has for the Son.

That answer to the question of our identity then leads to the question of our vocation – what are we here for? Again, the Holy Spirit is key because the Spirit is given to us as the first fruits of the kingdom of God. The kingdom is still to come but we have the Spirit as the guarantee that the kingdom will come. The Spirit comes from the future to anticipate the kingdom in the present by creating signs of what the kingdom will be like when it comes in full. So, the Spirit initiates the mission of God which is to bring humanity and creation to the completed perfection for which we were originally intended; the time when the whole world will freely return to God, worship him and become like him by living in him. As Colin Gunton has written, “the Spirit is the agent by whom God enables things to become that which they were created to be.”

Our role is to become involved in this work of the Spirit to heal the broken creation, bring it to maturity and reconcile it in Christ. We get involved by creating signs of the coming kingdom here and now in the present. In the conference, as an example, David Ford spoke of being in Rwanda with women whose families had died in the genocide. They spoke in a service about the pain of their loss and then a younger group of women danced. As they danced in praise of God, the older women cried and mourned their loved ones. Joy and grief were combined and both brought simultaneously to God.

Ford also gave the example of the L’Arche Community where those with learning disabilities and their Assistants live and work together. L'Arche is based on Christian principles, welcoming people of all faiths and none. Mutual relationships and trust in God are at the heart of their journey together and the unique value of every person is celebrated and both recognise their need of one another.

At the conference Rowan Williams also told the story of Mother Maria Skobtsova who on Good Friday 1945 changed places with a Jewish woman at the Ravensbruck Concentration Camp and went to her death in the gas chambers. Like L’Arche and the Rwandan women, Mother Maria was a sign of the coming kingdom in her passion and sacrifice. Mother Maria said that "either Christianity is fire or there is no such thing." Christianity is fire, passion, desire, longing, yearning for Christ and Christ’s mission. What is it that you desire?

If the Holy Spirit has stirred that fire, passion and desire in you then, like St Symeon, we need to cry out for the Spirit to come to us. To daily pray, “Come, Holy Spirit.” Come to stir up this desire and longing and yearning and passion in me. Come to make my heart restless till it finds its rest in you. Come to cause me to run into your arms of love. Come, Holy Spirit, come.

Let us pray,

Almighty God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
Together with believers all over the world,
We gather today to glorify Your Name.
Apart from You, we can do nothing.
Transform Your Church into the image of Jesus Christ.
Release Your power to bring healing to the sick,
freedom to the oppressed and comfort to those who mourn.
Pour Your love into our hearts and fill us with compassion
to answer the call of the homeless and the hungry
and to enfold orphans, widows and the elderly in Your care. Amen.

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Delirious? - Our God Reigns.

Saturday, 27 May 2023

One Beautiful World Arts Festival

The One Beautiful World Arts Festival ran from 12 -26 May 2023 in Wickford and Runwell, with local churches providing venues. The Festival featured: concerts involving Emma-Marie Kabonova, Simon Law, Ayo Omololu, Sam Opeche, Spring of Hope Choir, and Yardarm Folk Orchestra; dance from Steven Turner; exhibitions involving Jackie Burns, Mike Fogg and Terry Joyce of Compass Photography Group, Timothy Harrold, Pamela Jones, George Morl (and his art collection), members of Wickford Christian Centre, and Wickford and Runwell Mothers Union; poetry readings from Jonathan Evens and Timothy Harrold; a talk by George Morl; and an art trail involving the Wickford Salvation Army, St Andrew's, St Catherine's and St Mary's churches.

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Ayo Ayo - See Me Now.

Sacred Meetings and Near Thursbitch

Sacred Meetings - paintings by Greg Tricker is at Marylebone Theatre until 3 June 2023. Sacred Meetings is an exhibition of the work of Greg Tricker. Greg is a stone carver and painter. He was born in London in 1951. Deeply inspired by Vincent Van Gogh in the early years, he later developed his own unique style of painting on the Isles of Sicily. He trained as a monumental mason and now lives in the Cotswolds and teachers at the Ruskin Mill Centre.

His profound and simple style of paintings follows in the mystical and sacred tradition of art akin to the work of Rouault and Cecil Collins. Qualities of myth, echoes of the Folk Art Spirit and element of the circus feature in his work, which he presents in themes; he has produced a number of themed exhibitions, notably Paintings for Anne Frank (exhibited at Peterborough Cathedral and St Clement Danes, London), The Catacombs and recently Francis of Assisi exhibited at Salisbury Cathedral and Piano Nobile Gallery, London.

Peter S. Smith RE, wood engraver, was drawn to Jenkin Chapel near Thursbitch, high in the hills of the Peak District, by the story of a curious memorial stone, and that stone is the subject of a new booklet Near Thursbitch. Peter tells his story and shows his boxwood engraving of the stone, an oblique tale and an oblique engraving. It is shown as the centre of the trifold, the text from the two faces of the stone holding his engraving, in their grip.

Near Thursbitch has been published by Incline Press, which celebrates 30 years of printing books and ephemera in November 2023. Proprietor, printer and binder Graham Moss, has published over 120 limited edition books in traditional private press fashion. A true craftsman, he carefully chooses the metal type, paper and binding for each of them, creating a beautiful collection of sought-after work.

Near Thursbitch is set in 16 point type, designed by the calligrapher Alfred Fairbank in 1929; the cut lettering is represented by Russell Maret’s Baker, issued in 2016, also used as the titling fount. The wood type on the cover is from Stephenson Blake. Printed on 170gsm Zerkall paper, hand sewn with linen thread into a cover made by Papeterie St-Armand in Montreal. The edition is of 160 numbered copies, £36 including UK postage. Each copy is signed by the author/engraver.

Peter S. Smith RE, former head of the school of Art, Design and Media at Kingston college, is a member of the Society of Wood Engravers, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers. He has paintings and prints in public and private collections including Tate Britain, the Ashmolean, the Fitzwilliam and the British Museum. In September 2006 Piquant Editions published a book about his printmaking ‘The Way I See It’ with an introductory essay by Calvin Seerveld. He currently has a studio at the St. Bride Foundation, London, where he also teaches wood engraving workshops.

Peter currently has work in the RE Originals exhibition at the Bankside Gallery and will have a piece in the RA Summer Exhibition.

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Bruce Cockburn - O Sun By Day, O Moon By Night.