Between: March 2024

Saturday, 30 March 2024

Windows on the world (460)

Cambridge, 2024

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Midnight Oil - Forgotten Years.

I've recently had interviews published with artist-priest Matthew Askey and poet and publisher Chris Emery. So, I am updating this index of interviews. My interview with Matthew is here and with Chris here.

I have carried out a large number of other interviews for Artlyst, ArtWay, Church Times and Seen and Unseen. They provide a wide range of fascinating insights into the approaches and practices of artists, arts professionals, clerics, curators, poets and writers.

They can be found at:

Artlyst

ArtWay

Church Times

International Times

Jago Cooper: Living art and urgent questions

Seen and Unseen

Also see my interviews with artist Henry Shelton here and here and David Hawkins, former Bishop of Barking, here, here and here.

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Depeche Mode - Higher Love.

Friday, 29 March 2024

ArtWay - Stations of the Cross in Hornsea: Jonathan Evens Interviews Artist Matthew Askey

My latest interview for ArtWay is with the artist-priest Matthew Askey:

"Painting is intrinsically spiritual and prayerful. It is an act of spiritual hope. I’ve been dressing up as saints for selfies (linking Biblical saints to specific super-heroes – e.g. St Thomas being Spider Man), and when I was artist-in-residence at Lincoln cathedral during 2019 I invited staff and visitors to identify with a biblical character, dress up as them and then I drew or painted their portrait."

The interview has a particular focus on the new Stations of the Cross that Matthew has created for St Nicholas Church, Hornsea:

"This is a site-specific commission of paintings that link each Station to a part of the town. At each location in the town itself there is a QR Code to link to information about each Station. His ‘Stations’ are egg-tempera on gesso panels and are traditionally made, just like Orthodox icons. The theological theme of these Stations (in addition to The Cross of course) is ‘water and blood’."

See also my interview with Matthew for HeartEdge exploring the theme of Imaging the Invisible.

My visual meditations for ArtWay include work by María Inés Aguirre, Giampaolo Babetto, Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Alexander de Cadenet, Christopher Clack, Marlene Dumas, Terry Ffyffe, Jake Flood, Antoni Gaudi, Nicola Green, Maciej Hoffman, Gwen John, Lakwena Maciver, S. Billie Mandle, Giacomo Manzù, Sidney Nolan, Michael Pendry, Maurice Novarina, Regan O'Callaghan, Ana Maria Pacheco, John Piper, Nicola Ravenscroft, Albert Servaes, Henry Sh elton, Anna Sikorska, Alan Stewart, Jan Toorop, Andrew Vessey, Edmund de Waal and Sane Wadu.

My Church of the Month reports include: All Saints Parish Church, Tudeley, Aylesford Priory, Canterbury Cathedral, Chapel of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, Hem, Chelmsford Cathedral, Churches in Little Walsi ngham, Coventry Cathedral, Église de Saint-Paul à Grange-Canal, Eton College Chapel, Lumen, Metz Cathedral, Notre Dame du Léman, Notre-Dame de Toute Grâce, Plateau d’Assy,R omont, Sint Martinuskerk Latem, St Aidan of Lindisfarne, St Alban Romford, St. Andrew Bobola Polish RC Church, St. Margaret’s Church, Ditchling, and Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft, St Mary the Virgin, Downe, St Michael and All Angels Berwick and St Pa ul Goodmayes, as well as earlier reports of visits to sites associated with Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, Antoni Gaudi and Hen r i Matisse.

Blogs for ArtWay include: Congruity and controversy: exploring issues for contemporary commissions; Ervin Bossanyi: A vision for unity and harmony; Georges Rouault and André Girard: Crucifixion and Resurrection, Penitence and Life Anew; Photographing Religious Practice; Spirituality and/in Modern Art; and The Spirituality of the Artist-Clown.

Interviews for ArtWay include: Sophie Hacker, Peter Koenig, David Miller and Belinda Scarlett. I also interviewed ArtWay founder Marleen Hengelaar Rookmaaker for Artlyst.

I have reviewed: Art and the Church: A Fractious Embrace, Kempe: The Life, Art and Legacy of Charles Eamer Kempe and Jazz, Blues, and Spirituals.

Other of my writings for ArtWay can be found here. My pieces for Church Times can be found here. Those for Artlyst are here and those for Art+Christianity are here.

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Miles Davis & Sonny Stitt - Round Midnight.

Wednesday, 27 March 2024

The Mark of the Cross

Here's my reflection from today's Eucharist at St Andrew's Wickford:

In Luke’s Gospel we read that Jesus, when the days drew near for him to be taken up, set his face to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9.51-62). In Isaiah 50, we read of God’s servant setting his face like flint and not turning backwards although he gives his back to those who struck him, and his cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; so, he did not hide his face from insult and spitting (Isaiah 50.4-11). That is an accurate description of what Jesus did and endured in Jerusalem on the way to the cross:

Your face, set like flint,
set towards Jerusalem,
bears the mark of the cross.
You carry the cross
in the resolution
written on
your features.
Death is the choice,
the decision,
the destiny,
revealed
in the blood,
sweat and tears
secreted from
your face
in prayerful questions,
prophetic grief,
pain-full acceptance,
then
imprinted on
Veronica’s veil.

Jesus bore the mark of the cross on his face as he was so determined to go to Jerusalem and to the cross. In Luke’s Gospel we read that he entered a village of the Samaritans but they did not receive him, because his face was set towards Jerusalem. The flint-like determination on his face was such that the Samaritan villagers could see what he was determined to do.

What does this determination, this decision, say to us about Jesus and his death? In our Lent Course on the Stations of the Cross, we asked ourselves what was it that held Jesus to the cross? Was it the nails, or Pilate’s judgement and decree, or the presence of the soldiers, or the size of the crowd? If Jesus was God, then legions of angels could have freed him so, if that was the case, what actually held him there?

We then reflected on these two poems:

What holds you here?
The cruel nails
driven into wrists and feet?
Armed guards
ringing the base of your cross?
The crowd
mocking your purpose and pain?
The exhaustion
of a battered and beaten victim?
A willed commitment
to a loving, reconciling purpose?

***

Blow after hammer blow holds your body
to the cross. Yet, if you had willed so,
you could have walked away. You did not so will,
your will held you crucified and dying.

As God, Jesus had the power to walk away from the Cross or be rescued from it by legions of angels. He chose not to do so. Ultimately, it was not the nails or soldiers or the crowd, or those who condemned him that held him to the cross. He was there because he chose to be. It was his will and his determination and his love that held him there. We first see that will and determination in the flint-like setting of his face to go to Jerusalem. The steely determination that can be seen in his face is the mark of the cross on his face and a sign of his love for each one of us. This Holy Week may we see that love afresh as we look on his face that is set like flint.

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Adrian Snell - Golgotha.

Monday, 25 March 2024

Subverting the scapegoat mechanism

Here's the talk I gave this lunchtime at Billericay Methodist Church's Holy Week Midday Meditation Service:

Isaiah speaks of new things declared before they spring forth (Isaiah 42:1-9). They involve God’s servant on whom God’s Spirit is put and who will faithfully bring forth justice. God’s servant is given as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners who sit in darkness in the dungeon. He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth. Although originally spoken about Israel and its divine commission to be a light to the nations, Christians have often seen parallels with the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, who saw his mission as that of fulfilling the commission originally given to Israel.

At the beginning of Holy Week, I hope to provide a big picture view of what it was that Jesus was doing as he walked towards the cross and the empty tomb. I want to suggest that the insights of the French anthropologist René Girard explain how Jesus achieves the things mentioned in Isaiah’s prophecy and then suggest a way of responding to all that Jesus has done, through our reading from John’s Gospel (John 12:1-11).

Girard suggested that, as human beings, we all act on the basis of mimetic desire leading to conflict and violence which we resolve by the expulsion or sacrifice of scapegoats [R. Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightening (NY: Orbis Books, 2001)]. Mimetic desire is basically a kind of jealousy, but with a twist as we learn what is desirable by observing what others find desirable. Having ‘caught’ our desires from others in a context of scarcity where everyone wants what only some can have (i.e. the survival of the fittest), this results in a struggle to obtain what we want. This, in turn, produces a generalised antagonism towards the individual or group that seems to be responsible for this disappointment. That person or group become our victim as the vicious riddance of the victim has the potential to reduce our eagerness for violence. The removal of the victim or victims – the lambs to the slaughter - gives a temporary re-assurance of the crisis disappearing, and the sensation of renewed possibility. This is a description of cheap solidarity and cheap hope.

Girard claims that, as a result, societies and cultures are originally based on founding murders where this victim or scapegoating mechanism is in operation. He points to Cain’s murder of Abel as being the Biblical story which reveals this basis to human culture: “What has happened since the foundation of the world, that is, since the violent foundations of the first culture, is a series of murders like the Crucifixion. These are murders founded on violent contagion, and consequently they are murders occurring because of the collective error regarding the victim, a misunderstanding caused by violent contagion” [R. Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightening (NY: Orbis Books, 2001), pp. 85 & 86].

The story of Cain and Abel reveals the way in which we consistently act, as human beings. We desire something that is possessed by someone else and become disturbed through our longing for what we don’t have. We resolve our disturbance by creating a scapegoat of the person or people who appear to have or prevent us from having what it is we desire. When the scapegoat is killed, we can gain what we desire and also release the sense of disturbance that we feel. Over time, Girard argues, this mimetic process is disciplined by ritual into sacrificial systems which repeat the founding murder. So, this pattern becomes expressed in religions involving human sacrifices as scapegoats to appease their gods. It is out of such religions that Abraham was called to form a people who do not sacrifice other human beings, but instead use animals as their scapegoats and sacrifices.

After the Fall, God wished to communicate his love to us, human beings intent on personal or group survival. As he had given us free will, he had to communicate in and through the social and cultural structures which we had now created (i.e. sacrificial systems Girard writes about) but, in order to reveal his loving self, had to do so in a way that engaged in an internal dialogue and critique of these same systems. Accordingly, he gave his chosen people, who had recent and personal experience of being scapegoats and victims, a founding story - the story of the sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22. 1-19) - in which human sacrifice is emphatically rejected in favour of animal sacrifice.

The legacy of the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, Girard suggests, is that Israel developed a system of animal sacrifice that continued until shortly after the crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus was later born into this people who had subverted the existing practice of scapegoating and he further subverts this practice because, as he is crucified, God becomes the scapegoat that is killed. Jesus’ crucifixion, Girard suggests, was both about God identifying himself with all victims – the scapegoats – who have been sacrificed down through the centuries and also, because in Jesus God himself was scapegoated and sacrificed, the ultimate demonstration of the reality that, as Hosea first stated and Jesus then repeated, God requires mercy, not sacrifice.

As a result, Girard traces a movement away from the dynamic of scapegoating through the Old into the New Testaments. This was something he identified through his anthropological and literary analysis of scapegoating in Judeo-Christian texts and it was this that contributed to his own conversion to the Christian faith. His analysis of the Bible led him to conclude that: Jesus is the final scapegoat; the New Testament is on the side of Jesus, the scapegoat; the scapegoat in the Gospels refuses to let death be the final word and rises again triumphant; and the followers of the scapegoat re-enact the seizing of the scapegoat and the scapegoat’s triumph over death in Eucharistic celebration.

The Gospels are unusual as literature because they encourage people to see the world through the eyes of the scapegoat. The Bible can then be seen as the record of a conversation between God and a human race which has, as a whole, rejected this conversation but which, in a remnant (mainly Israel and the Church), continues to oscillate between dialogue and independent rejection.

The life, death and resurrection of Jesus is so decisive, Girard writes, because “Jesus’ ‘strategy’ as the ambassador from a loving, non-violent Father is to expose and render ineffective the scapegoat process so that the true face of God may be known … in the scapegoat, or Lamb of God, not the face of a persecuting deity.” So, at the Last Supper, Christ calls us to follow him in serving others, while his Crucifixion reveals the foolishness of scapegoating others and the necessity of concern for all who are victims.

The crucifixion is also the logical outcome of the incarnation. Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, has explored in his book ‘The Nazareth Manifesto’ that God is not simply 'for' victims. Instead, God is 'with' victims, because God is a victim. God is not simply 'for' the excluded. God is 'with' the excluded, because God is excluded. God is not simply 'for' those who are scapegoated. God is 'with' scapegoats, because God is a scapegoat. When God is scapegoated, there is no longer any god to appease and the necessity for scapegoating at all is superseded, subverted and eradicated.

This is the reality into which Christianity calls us to live; a world beyond scapegoating, beyond victimisation and beyond exclusion. A world in which the mechanisms for justifying and acting out our violent desires has been dismantled and rendered null and void. A world, as Barbara Brown Taylor has said, in which we ‘keep deciding not to hate the haters, … keep risking the fatal wound of love and teaching others to do the same — because that is how we prepare the ground around us to receive the seeds of heaven when they come.’

Girard has described this radical reversal in terms of God first taking the side of the victim and then, in Christ, becoming the victim: “The desire that lives through imitation almost always leads to conflict, and this conflict frequently leads to violence. The Bible unveils this process of imitative desire leading to conflict, and its distinctive narratives reveal at the same time that God takes the part of victims. In the Gospels the process of unveiling or revelation is radicalized: God himself, the Word become flesh in Jesus, becomes the victim … The New Testament Gospels are the starting point for a new science or knowledge of humanity. This new knowledge begins with faith in Christ the innocent victim, and it becomes the leaven that will work itself out and expand to the point that the concern for victims becomes the absolute value in all societies moulded or affected by the spread of Christianity” (J. G. Williams, ‘Foreword’ in R. Girard, I see Satan fall like lightning, Orbis Books, 2001).

So, "Girard brings our attention to three facts without which we will never make sense of our lives, our world or our faith, namely: the role violence has played in cultural life, the role mimesis plays in psychological and social life, and the role the Bible plays in revealing both of these things and showing us how to deal with them." Girard reveals how the developing dialogue and narrative of scripture can critique, deconstruct and expose societal norms such as the scapegoat mechanism. In this way, Girard's thesis gives us an understanding of the way in which the narrative of scripture can speak to our world today.

How should we respond to God’s dismantling of the scapegoating mechanism by taking the side of victims and by becoming a victim for us? I want to suggest that we should respond as Mary did in our Gospel reading. Mary poured ointment over Jesus’ feet and dried his feet with her hair. Giving in this way involved giving generously from her possessions because the ointment that she used was expensive (imported from countries such as India) and extravagant (half a litre was an enormous amount to use in this way). It also involved giving generously of herself as Jewish women traditionally kept their hair tied up in public and only unloosened their hair in the presence of their husbands. What Mary did in wiping Jesus’ feet with her hair was the ultimate sign of her love for and commitment to Jesus. She did all this, not with regret or out of a sense of duty, but gladly and generously.

Her gift to Jesus was also a response to the love that Jesus had shown towards her. She gave because Jesus had first given extravagantly and generously to her. That is the pattern that we see repeated in God’s dealings with human beings throughout scripture and which is summed up in the most famous verse of scripture, John 3: 16: “God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son.” God so loved, that he gave. Love is the reason for giving; not duty, not regret, but love. In Jesus’ life, death and resurrection God gave everything he had for us. Philippians 2 tells us that, of his own free will, Jesus “gave up all he had, and took the nature of a servant. He became like a human being and appeared in human likeness. He was humble and walked the path of obedience all the way to death – his death on the cross.” This is the extravagant nature of Jesus’ love for us that he would give up all he had in order to walk the path of obedience all the way to his death on the cross.

‘This is what Mary saw in Jesus and is why she responded by giving extravagantly and generously to him. Jesus then astonished the disciples by giving Mary the highest commendation anyone receives in the pages of the Gospels: “Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.” (Mark 14:6 -9)’

In reflecting on this story, the artist Makoto Fujimura has said that he prays that, “there will be a new aroma in the air: an aroma of Mary of Bethany, who in response to Jesus’ tears in John 11 and 12 brought her most precious belonging, her most gratuitous, expensive nard. I pray that in the days to come, this aroma will fill the air whenever the words of the Gospel are spoken, that outsiders to faith will sense this extravagant air and feel it, particularly for them. I pray that when our children speak of faith, this gratuitous, intuitive aroma of the love of Christ will be made manifest in their lives.” May that be our prayer this day and throughout our lives.

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Julie Miller - How Could You Say No.

Sunday, 24 March 2024

Meditation on Anselm Kiefer’s Palm Sunday

Meditation on Anselm Kiefer’s Palm Sunday - Thursday 28th May 2009, Tate Modern

Dead diagonal
transecting space
dusty, dirty palm
bleached of life
red clay
ball of roots
leaves droop
and trail
once fertile
now fragile
creviced trunk
bridges root ball
and limp
foliage bush

two walls -
39 framed panels
stacked three panels high –
are backdrop
to the palm diagonal
desert landscapes
composed of leaves
and sand
hieratic bleached leaves
tangled twigs
discarded clothing
dead matter
constructing created
mindscapes for the soul

Vast vistas -
cracked clay
dry surfaces -
death and decay
sterility and stasis
worlds shattered
and broken
apocalyptic
thirsty lands
praying for water

39
and the installation
forming 40 -
40 desert days
and nights
demonic temptations
forming
repentance sermons
Where are
our roots?
Have we lost
our roots?
Are we
torn up
by our roots?
Is our world
sterile, shallow,
cracked, breaking,
dry, dusty,
diseased, dirty,
dead?

Words written
in sand –
“vater”
“psalmsonntag”
“domenica
belle palme” –
words written
in sand –
pregnant pause
transient scribing
before
pointed challenge
and rocks
falling from hands
onto sand

An event
containing
death and life
turning on
signs in sand
water in desert
life in death
restoration in ruins
An installation
containing
creative dryness
constructive discards
where dead
things live as
objects of reflection
where discards
are reimagined
recombined
reworked
recreated
from detritus
and decay
dust
and destruction

Palm Sunday -
a festival
containing its
own apocalypse
and apotheosis
a welcome
that become
a waylaying
a celebration
that became
a condemnation
a crucifixion
that became
a resurrection

Palms torn
from a living tree
are thrown
in the dust
as welcome
to be trodden
underfoot
and discarded
bleached
by the noonday
sun
these
discarded palms
gathered up
centuries later
for artistic
recreation

Is this
object
installation
and moment
of reflection
a pregnant
pause
a creative
sign in sand
a recreative
refashioning
reforming
from the
dry
discarded
and detritic
the sterile
stagnant
and static?

National Galleries of Scotland say:

'Palmsonntag (Palm Sunday)' refers to the Biblical story of Christ’s journey into Jerusalem shortly before his arrest and execution, when worshippers laid palm leaves in his path. Kiefer’s recent installation comprises thirty paintings featuring palm fronds and stems, alongside a palm tree cast in resin. As the prelude towards Christ’s eventual death, the story symbolises for the artist, the moment between triumph and destruction. Laid on the gallery floor, the fallen tree echoes the body of Christ before his resurrection, suggesting both mortality and eventual renewal.

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Mark Heard - Rise From The Ruins.

Holy Week & Easter Services

Wickford & Runwell Team Ministry: Holy Week & Easter Services

Holy Week (25-31 March)

Stations of the Cross and Night Prayer – 8.00 pm

St Catherine’s (Monday), St Andrew’s (Tuesday), St Mary’s (Wednesday)

Eucharist with footwashing – Maundy Thursday

(28 March), 8.00 pm, St Catherine’s (followed by The Watch)

Good Friday

Walk of Witness – begins from Our Lady of Good Counsel at 10.00 am

At the Foot of the Cross – 2.00 pm, St Andrew’s with The Rt Revd Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, Bishop of Chelmsford and soloist Eva Romanakova

Easter Day (31 March)

Service of Light – 6.00 am St Mary’s, followed by breakfast

Eucharist – 9.30 am St Mary’s; Eucharist – 10.00 am St Andrew’s; Eucharist – 11.00 am St Catherine’s

Additionally, I will be speaking at Billericay Methodist Church Western Road as part of their Holy Week Midday Meditation Services on Monday 25 March, 12.00 pm.

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My Song Is Love Unknown.

Saturday, 23 March 2024

Windows on the world (459)

London, 2024

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Mike Scott - What Do You Want Me To Do.

International Times - Polyphony, poetry and publishing. An interview with Chris Emery

My latest interview for International Times is with the poet Chris Emery, who is also a Director of Salt Publishing:

'Chris Emery is a poet and director of Salt. He has published four collections of poetry, with the most recent, Modern Fog (2024), being described as a collection of “elegiac, tough-minded poems of marked originality and scope”. With “attentive, atmospheric, musical poems” that “can light up everywhere: seascapes, edgelands, interiors, even a carpark”, his “art is at once earthy, spiritual, dreamlike and exact”.'

My review of 'Modern Fog' by Chris Emery is on Tears in the Fence:

'Modern Fog, through its “poems about landscape and animals and distant fictions” is primarily a collection about giving up “on who you think you are”, “to become something new, something estranged, maybe even something redeemed from the silly paraphernalia of midlife identity” – a time when a new vulnerability can emerge.'

My published pieces on poets include an article for Seen & Unseen 'Theresa Lola's poetical hope' about the death-haunted yet lyrical, joyful and moving poet for a new generation and an ArtWay interview with artist, musician and poet David Miller which is here. My poetry reviews for Stride Magazine include a review of two poetry collections, one by Mario Petrucci and the other by David Miller, a revie w of Temporary Archive: Poems by Women of Latin America, a review of Fukushima Dreams by Andrea Moorhead, a review of Endangered Sky by Kelly Grovier and Sean Scully, review of John F. Deane's Selected & New Poems, and a review of God's Little Angel by Sue Hubbard. To read my poems published by Stride, click here, here, here, here, and here. My poems published in Amethyst Review are: 'Runwell', 'Are/Are Not', 'Attend, attend' and 'Maritain, Green, Beckett and Anderson in conversation down through the ages'.

My earlier pieces for IT are an interview with Jago Cooper, Director of the the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, reviews of 'Giacometti in Paris' by Michael Peppiatt, the first Pissabed Prophet album - 'Zany in parts, moving in others, you’ll be hard pressed to find a more unusual, inspired & profound album this year. ‘Pissabed Prophet’ will thrill, intrigue, amuse & inspire' - and 'Religion and Contemporary Art: A Curious Accord', a book which derives from a 2017 symposium organised by the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art.

Several of my short stories have been published by IT including three about Nicola Ravenscroft's EarthAngel sculptures (then called mudcubs), which we exhibited at St Andrew's Wickford last Autumn. The first story in the series is 'The Mudcubs and the O Zone holes'. The second is 'The Mudcubs and the Clean-Up King', and the third is 'The mudcubs and the Wall'.

My other short stories to have been published by International Times are 'The Black Rain', a story about the impact of violence in our media, 'The New Dark Ages', a story about principles and understandings that are gradually fading away from our modern societies, and 'The curious glasses', a story based on the butterfly effect.

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Chris Emery - The Goose Moon.

Friday, 22 March 2024

Visual Commentary on Scripture - Faith: To Our Hopes

The Visual Commentary on Scripture’s Lent offering this year is based as usual around 14 ‘Stations’ which began on Ash Wednesday and continue on Mondays and Fridays until Holy Week. All the commentaries in the series have an audio feature so that you can listen to them while viewing the works of art. Their 2024 Stations share with you a series of seven works exploring, first, the seven vices most commonly included in lists of the ‘deadly sins’, and then, second, the seven cardinal and theological virtues.

The Christian practice of listing vices and virtues has a long history, going back at least to the times of the very early desert monks in the fourth and fifth centuries. As they cultivated their little patches of land in order to sustain themselves, they also cultivated their bodies and souls to make them as fruitful as they could. Later, medieval Christian manuscripts featured the motif of the ‘virtue garden’, in which the virtues (usually seven) are shown as trees, being watered by prayer.

Christianity, like Judaism, likes having things in sevens. The sixth-century Pope Gregory the Great codified what he thought of as the seven ’capital’ sins—the vices from which all other wrongdoings flow—establishing what we still commonly refer to today as the seven ‘deadly’ sins. The list has varied a little over time. Some vices have dropped out and others have been dropped in. But overall, it has been remarkably consistent.

There has also been variety in the seven virtues Christians have listed for special consideration and imitation. Some lists are based on Jesus’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount (‘the Beatitudes’); some were developed to describe specific antidotes to each of the capital vices; and one was a combination of four ‘cardinal’ virtues, celebrated in ancient classical philosophy as well as in Jewish and Christian tradition—Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude—with the three ‘theological’ virtues outlined by St Paul in 1 Corinthians 13—Faith, Hope, and Love.

Their commentaries explore what some of the more archaic-sounding virtues, like fortitude and temperance might have to teach us in a 21st-century context. Perseverance and self-restraint are, after all, things we need as much as ever.

And because vices are usually good things gone wrong—inordinate or disordered love for something that isn’t necessarily bad in itself, but bad when desired too much or in the wrong way—then you may find the occasional surprise along this Lenten journey: for example, a ‘vice’ having more of the qualities of a ‘virtue’ than you expected.

Lent is a time for spiritual gardening. They hope you will find this year’s Lent Stations a helpful way to take stock of what you might like to weed and what you might like to nurture in your own contexts.

Today's Station - Station 12 Faith: To Our Hopes - uses my second exhibition for the Visual Commentary on Scripture which can be found at A Question of Faith | VCS (thevcs.org). It's called 'A Question of Faith' and explores Hebrews 11 through the paintings of New Zealand artist Colin McCahon.

McCahon is widely recognised as New Zealand’s foremost painter. Over 45 years, his work encompassed many themes, subjects and styles, from landscape to figuration to abstraction and an innovative use of painted text. His adaption of aspects of modernist painting to a specific local situation and his intense engagement with spiritual matters, mark him out as a distinctive figure in twentieth-century art.

The VCS is a freely accessible online publication that provides theological commentary on the Bible in dialogue with works of art. It helps its users to (re)discover the Bible in new ways through the illuminating interaction of artworks, scriptural texts, and commissioned commentaries. The virtual exhibitions of the VCS aim to facilitate new possibilities of seeing and reading so that the biblical text and the selected works of art come alive in new and vivid ways.

Each section of the VCS is a virtual exhibition comprising a biblical passage, three art works, and their associated commentaries. The curators of each exhibition select artworks that they consider will open up the biblical texts for interpretation, and/or offer new perspectives on themes the texts address. The commentaries explain and interpret the relationships between the works of art and the scriptural text.

The McCahon exhibition varies the usual VCS format slightly by providing a greater focus on works by one artist than is usually the case. That is possible in this instance because all of the works in the exhibition explore aspects of Hebrews 11.

My first exhibition for the VCS was 'Back from the Brink' on Daniel 4: 'Immediately the word was fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men, and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers, and his nails were like birds’ claws.' (Daniel 4:33). In the exhibition I explore this chapter with William Blake's Nebuchadnezzar, 1795–c.1805, Arthur Boyd's Nebuchadnezzar's Dream of the Tree, 1969, and Peter Howson's The Third Step, 2001.

Find out more about the VCS, its exhibitions and other resources through a short series of HeartEdge workshops introducing the VCS as a whole and exploring particular exhibitions with their curators. These workshops can be viewed here, here, here and here.

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King's X - Faith, Hope, Love.

Seen and Unseen: Theresa Lola's poetical hope

My latest article for Seen & Unseen is 'Theresa Lola's poetical hope' about the death-haunted yet lyrical, joyful and moving poet for a new generation:

'Masoliver notes that “The collection is book-ended with Lola’s own prayer and psalm”. “From the first,” she suggests, “there is an expression of doubt about the poet’s faith, though holding onto it ‘even when I fear God might be a thin shadow’”. Yet, “By the time we get to the final poem, there is a loss of innocence to the reality of the world around us, but a certain strength that comes with ‘fighting darkness’”. Niroshini states that “This poet speaks boldly of prayer as a call to arms for family, for love, for a survival, which as she concludes in the final poem, ‘Psalm 151’, ‘I prayed my fists into’”.'

My poetry reviews for Stride Magazine include a review of two poetry collections, one by Mario Petrucci and the other by David Miller, a revie w of Temporary Archive: Poems by Women of Latin America, a review of Fukushima Dreams by Andrea Moorhead, a review of Endangered Sky by Kelly Grovier and Sean Scully, review of John F. Deane's Selected & New Poems, and a review of God's Little Angel by Sue Hubbard. See also my review, for Tears in the Fence, of 'Modern Fog' by Chris Emery.

To read my poems published by Stride, click here, here, here, here, and here. My poems published in Amethyst Review are: 'Runwell', 'Are/Are Not', 'Attend, attend' and 'Maritain, Green, Beckett and Anderson in conversation down through the ages'. Read my ArtWay interview with artist, musician and poet David Miller here.

My first article for Seen and Unseen was 'Life is more important than art' which reviews the themes of recent art exhibitions that tackle life’s big questions and the roles creators take.

My second article 'Corinne Bailey Rae’s energised and anguished creative journey' explores inspirations in Detroit, Leeds and Ethiopia for Corinne Bailey Rae’s latest album, Black Rainbows, which is an atlas of capacious faith.

My third article was an interview with musician and priest Rev Simpkins in which we discussed how music is an expression of humanity and his faith.

My fourth article was a guide to the Christmas season’s art, past and present. Traditionally at this time of year “great art comes tumbling through your letterbox” so, in this article, I explore the historic and contemporary art of Christmas.

My fifth article was 'Finding the human amid the wreckage of migration'. In this article I interviewed Shezad Dawood about his multimedia Leviathan exhibition at Salisbury Cathedral where personal objects recovered from ocean depths tell a story of modern and ancient migrations.

My sixth article was 'The visionary artists finding heaven down here' in which I explored a tradition of visionary artists whose works shed light on the material and spiritual worlds.

My seventh article was 'How the incomer’s eye sees identity' in which I explain how curating an exhibition for Ben Uri Online gave me the chance to highlight synergies between ancient texts and current issues.

My eighth article was 'Infernal rebellion and the questions it asks' in which I interview the author Nicholas Papadopulos about his book The Infernal Word: Notes from a Rebel Angel.

My ninth article was 'A day, night and dawn with Nick Cave’s lyrics' in which I review Adam Steiner’s Darker With The Dawn — Nick Cave’s Songs Of Love And Death and explore whether Steiner's rappel into Cave’s art helps us understand its purpose.

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Theresa Lola - 'For Those Who Listen When Courage Calls'.

Monday, 18 March 2024

The Minories, Colchester

The Minories is an arts charity and gallery in an historic townhouse in central Colchester. 74 High Street has long been an essential part of any visit to the town centre, and in the warmer months its secluded garden is a particular delight. To discover its peace and calm for the first time is a memory that certainly seems to remain in many visitors’ hearts. Inside, in the galleries and reception rooms, elegant spaces can be found ideal for quiet, visual contemplation.

Clarence Victor Batte-Lay (1865-1935) was a Colchester man who had done well in the brewing business in Norfolk, and retired to Colchester where he built a collection of art and artefacts. His widow, Mrs Margaret Eleanor Batte-Lay, died in 1955 and left the collection and a sum of money to purchase ‘an ancient building of antiquarian or archaeological interest’ to house the collection, in memory of her husband, and ‘for the benefit and advantage of the inhabitants of Colchester’.

“…The exhibitions held by the Trust from 1958 to 1993… numbered some four hundred. [This] represents an artistic achievement of which any gallery could be justifiably proud. Constable, Becker, Bawden, Nash, Bratby, Manet and contemporary artists such as John Doubleday, Anthony Atkinson, Guy Taplin, nine names chosen at random from this eclectic list, indicate the range and quality of the shows. The exhibitions included regular shows by the Colchester Art Society and Colchester School of Art and Design. And embraced sculpture, ceramics and textiles as well as paintings and prints.” (John Woods and Clifford Welch, Celebration of 50 Years of the Victor Batte Lay Trust, 2005)

Firstsite occupied the Minories and ran a vibrant gallery and art centre throughout the 1990s and until 2009 when it moved into its new building next door. Then Colchester Institute took the lease and used the Minories to accommodate its postgraduate MA course in fine art. With the arrival of the Covid19 pandemic lockdown, the Institute closed the building and announced it would not reopen during the remainder of its lease. At this announcement, the Victor Batte-Lay Foundation decided the time had come to take back control of the Minories and, working with artists, arts organisations, community groups, public bodies, and the people of Colchester and North Essex, to reimagine the Minories as an arts centre for the post-Covid twenty-first century.

The current exhibitions are:

Hayletts Gallery: Contemporary and Modern British Original Prints
Saturday 16 – Sunday 24 March 2024, 10am - 4pm

A selection of screenprints, etchings, woodcuts, linocuts and lithographs, incorporating works by many of the most noted artists from 1940’s to the current day. Includes prints by pioneering Essex artists:- Edward Bawden, Eduardo Paolozzi, John Nash, Humphrey Spender and Michael Rothenstein. There are also artworks by:- David Hockney, Bridget Riley, Henry Moore, Eric Ravilious, Barbara Hepworth, Paula Rego, Tracey Emin, Elisabeth Frink, Elizabeth Blackadder, Peter Blake, Mary Fedden, Edward Burra, Victor Pasmore, John Piper, Terry Frost, John Hoyland, Julian Opie, Marc Quinn, Albert Irvin, Craigie Aitchison, Anita Klein, Karolina Larusdottir, Patrick Caulfield, David Shrigley and Julian Trevelyan.

Works on Paper from the Victor Batte-Lay Foundation Collection
Thursday 15 February – Sunday 24 March 2024, 10am - 4pm

A exhibition of works on paper drawn from the Permanent Art Collection of the Victor Batte-Lay Foundation, who own the Minories. Featuring Dione Page, Blair Hughes-Stanton, Lucien Pissarro, Lisa Temple-Cox, John Nash, Paul Nash and John Bensusan-Butt.

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Dave Gahan - Kingdom.

Saturday, 16 March 2024

Windows on the world (458)

London, 2024

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The Prayer Chain - I Believe.

Hannah Rose Thomas: Tears of Gold

Last night I was at Exhibition Launch for 'Tears of Gold' at Garden Court Chambers. This exhibition by the artist, author, and human rights activist Hannah Rose Thomas features portraits of Yazidi women who escaped ISIS captivity, Rohingya women who fled violence in Myanmar, and Nigerian women who survived Boko Haram and Fulani oppression. Hannah’s most recent portraits depict survivors of the re-education camps in Xinjiang, China, and of conflicts in Afghanistan, Ukraine and the Gaza Strip.

With these artworks, along with the associated publication Tears of Gold, Thomas bears witness—painting by painting, relationship by relationship—to the singular stories shared by each individual, and by extension the trauma and recovery experienced by their communities.

This body of work not only serves as a reminder to remain concerned about the ongoing persecution of people around the world based on their backgrounds and beliefs, but also reflects on the complexities and limits of empathy as we look to pursue justice more compassionately.

Hannah Rose Thomas demonstrates the potential of caring and creative practices that take time to listen, learn, and focus a prayer-like attention on the suffering of others and in the process reveal a sense of interrelatedness, common vulnerability, and shared humanity that allows for healing and hope.

Hannah Rose Thomas is a British artist and an UNESCO PhD Scholar at the University of Glasgow. She has previously organized art projects for Syrian refugees in Jordan; Yazidi women who escaped ISIS captivity in Iraqi Kurdistan; Rohingya refugees in Bangladeshi camps and Nigerian women survivors of Boko Haram. Her paintings of displaced women are a testament to their strength and dignity. These have been exhibited at prestigious places including the UK Houses of Parliament, European Parliament, Scottish Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Lambeth Palace, Westminster Abbey, the International Peace Institute in New York and The Saatchi Gallery.

Her exhibition Tears of Gold was featured in the virtual exhibition for the UN’s Official 75th Anniversary, “The Future is Unwritten: Artists for Tomorrow.” Hannah was selected for the Forbes 30 Under 30 2019 Art & Culture; shortlisted for the Women of the Future Award 2020 and selected for British Vogue Future Visionaries 2022. Hannah’s debut art book Tears of Gold: Portraits of Yazidi, Rohingya and Nigerian Women was published in 2024, with a foreword by HM King Charles III.

The book also presents Thomas' stunning portrait paintings of Yazidi women who escaped ISIS captivity, Rohingya women who fled violence in Myanmar, and Nigerian women who survived Boko Haram violence, alongside their own words, stories, and self-portraits. A final chapter features portraits and stories of Afghan, Ukrainian, Uyghur, and Palestinian women.

These portraits, depicting women from three continents and three religions, are a visual testimony not only of war and injustice but also of humanity and resilience. Many of the women have suffered sexual violence; all have been persecuted and forcibly displaced on account of their faith or ethnicity.

Hannah Rose Thomas met these women in Iraqi Kurdistan, Bangladeshi refugee camps, and Northern Nigeria while organizing art projects to teach women how to paint their self-portraits as a way to reclaim their personhood and self-worth. She gives women their own voice both by creating a safe space for them to share their stories and by using her impressive connections to make sure their stories are heard in places of influence in the Global North.

Thomas uses techniques of traditional sacred art – early Renaissance tempera and oil painting and gold leaf – to convey the sacred value of each of these women in spite of all that they have suffered. This symbolic restoration of dignity is especially important considering the stigma surrounding sexual violence. Hannah’s work attests to the power of the arts as a vehicle for healing, remembering, inclusion, and dialogue.

Long after the news cameras have moved on to the next conflict, this book shines a spotlight on the ongoing work of healing and restoration in some of the most vulnerable and marginalized communities around the world.

Hannah's essay from the book can be read here. My interview with Hannah for Artlyst can be read here. My Church Times review of her UN75 exhibition is here. Hannah exhibited at St Stephen Walbrook in 2017 and posts about that exhibition are here and here. Hannah also participated in a HeartEdge workshop on 'Art and Social Change' which can be viewed here.

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Tim Hughes - We Won't Stay Silent.

Index of interviews

I've just had my first interview for International Times published. This interview is with Jago Cooper, Director of the the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts

I have carried out a large number of other interviews for Artlyst, ArtWay, Church Times and Seen&Unseen. They provide a wide range of fascinating insights into the approaches and practices of artists, arts professionals, clerics, curators, poets and writers.

They can be found at:

Artlyst

ArtWay

Church Times

Seen and Unseen

Also see my interviews with artist Henry Shelton here and here and David Hawkins, former Bishop of Barking, here, here and here.

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L.S. Underground - This Is The Healing.