Online exhibitions and visual meditations

Here's an update about the online exhibitions I have curated with the Ben Uri Gallery and the Visual Commentary on Scripture. These include visual meditations on the artworks included. I have also written visual meditations for ArtWay, so these are also included in this post. 

I have curated an online exhibition for the Ben Uri Gallery which is entitled Exodus & Exile: Migration Themes in Biblical Images. The exhibition includes a range of Biblical images from the Ben Uri Collection in order to explore migration themes through consideration of the images, the Bible passages which inspired them and the relationship between the two. This is because themes of identity and migration feature significantly in both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles and images from these Bibles are a substantive element of the Ben Uri Collection.

The combination of images and texts enables a range of different reflections, relationships and disjunctions to be explored. The result is that significant synergies can be found between the ancient texts and current issues. In this way, stories and images which may, at first, appear to be describing or defining specific religious doctrines can be seen to take on a shared applicability by exploring or revealing the challenges and changes bound up in the age-old experience of migration.

The Gallery said: "We are delighted to present a new exhibition interpreting works from our collection titled Exodus and Exile. The survey has been curated by Revd Jonathan Evens who has a long-established parallel interest in art and faith and how they are mutually engaging. We are privileged to benefit from his scholarship and innate sensitivity and am sure you too will be inspired by his selection and commentary."

Alongside the exhibition is an essay Debt Owed to Jewish Refugee Art, an updated version of an article I originally wrote for Church Times looking at influential works by émigré Jewish artists that were under threat. The article mentions Ervin Bossanyi, Naomi Blake, Ernst Müller-Blensdorf, Hans Feibusch, and George Mayer-Marton, telling stories of the impact of migration on the work and reputations of these artists.

Following the launch of the exhibition, I wrote an article 'How the incomer’s eye sees identity' for Seen and Unseen explaining how curating an exhibition for the Ben Uri Gallery & Museum gave me the chance to highlight synergies between ancient texts and current issues.

I have also curated three exhibitions for the Visual Commentary on Scripture. My first exhibition for the VCS is 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.

My second exhibition is 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.

My third exhibition is Fishers of People | VCS (thevcs.org). This exhibition uses Damien Hirst's 'Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purpose of Understanding (Left) and (Right)', John Bellany's 'Kinlochbervie', and Paul Thek's 'Fishman in Excelsis Table' to discuss Matthew 4:12-22 and Mark 1:14-20. These artworks give us what is essentially a collage of the kingdom whereby we are invited to imagine the kingdom of God as a body of water in which Christians are immersed and through which they are raised.

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.

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.

ArtWay's visual meditations are devoted to one work of art, old or new, made by a Christian artist or not, from Europe, North-America or another part of the world. They advocate a thoughtful engagement with art and culture over against an uninformed rejection or uncritical embrace. While dealing with works of art, they have an eye for the form as well as the content. To them an important aspect of this content is formed by the spiritual dimension of a work, whether Christian, Buddhist, or postmodern. They especially look for voices of truth, hope and love in the art of the past and the present, whether or not by Christian hand.

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 Shelton, Anna Sikorska, Alan Stewart, Jan Toorop, Andrew Vessey, Edmund de Waal and Sane Wadu.

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Held By Trees - The Tree Of Life.