St Peter De Beauvoir Town - Memory Installation

St Peter De Beauvoir Town is a place of worship and prayer, with services and spaces to help parishioners and visitors on their life journey. They are deeply rooted in the neighbourhood of De Beauvoir, and host a wealth of community activity in their newly renovated crypt.

This Easter, artist Angela Wright created 'an installation for the church which was made in conjunction with four workshops using 'Memory' as their theme.' 'It presents objects lent by Angela and church attendees.' 'This offered the church a valuable opportunity for outreach to older people and dementia support networks. The installation provided a backdrop to a Lent programme of Holy Conversations – stories of St Peter’s and stories of God: stories of grace and well-being, scarcity and abundance, grief and change.'

'Her addition hardly changes the building environment - adding a vague complexity at the margins of sight - diverging from the chancel as if scattering fragments of its windows' colours into the body of the church. When however one approaches a wall, miscellaneous objects, trapped and flaunted in a turbulent stream of wire, become increasingly recognisable as a detritus of ordinary manufactured and naturally formed things. One's curiosity is aroused and one's attention focuses a single object, which stripped of its context of familiarity - of use and meaning that is extraneous to actuality - is awarded uniqueness and we see it as bizarre: a thing manifesting complex characteristics that are relatively undiluted by perceptions of its 'place and purpose in the world'.'

Angela has said: “Before I started to attach them I laid out all of the memorable objects on tables and they became my palette. I needed to become familiar with them. Their shapes, their colours, history and how they might live together. Finding that special resting place on the wall was not simple and it could take time, sometimes days and a small percentage of objects were rejected. The placing and space around each object was an important aspect of the installation. In the end around 430 objects were incorporated. In the final week, knitting needles were employed to help direct the sense of movement around the building. Balls of wool picking up the colours of the stained glass were used to draw the eye to the unity of the building.”

'The appreciation of the piece grows by the week as people slowly take it in. At first glance you might think it was a display of leftover Christmas decorations – many of the objects are suspended and catch the changing light in the building. As you draw closer you see that each object has its own space, its own voice and viewing becomes an act of contemplation.'

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Innocence Mission - Evensong.

News from Wallspace

News from Wallspace:

Last chance to see 189 Miles Wool installation by Angela Wright - This has been a great experience and is coming to an end on Monday 13th April, come and take the opportunity to see it over this bank holiday! We're open 11am - 4pm. Over 600 people have come to see the work so far, here are a few of their responses:

• Impressive work. Impressive setting.
• Lovely to see light and shade passing across the work.
• I must admit it was my first time visiting the space and I thought Angela Wright’s installation was just excellent – really worked in harmony with the space, remarkably avoiding any overt religious symbolism which I found fascinating. Beautiful work, and I sincerely hope to visit Wallspace again in the future!
• I LOVE Angela’s piece, found it mesmerizing and fantastical, desperate to touch and stroke it, took supreme effort to leave it alone. Images of Rapunzel, Miss Haversham, and Gabriel kept coming to mind! Ultimately, felt it was about ‘grace’ in some strange way.

Next Exhibition: VISIONAIRIES working in the margins (May 19 – June 11 2009) - An exhibition of works and performance by artists on the edge – visionary artists whose work is set outside or on the fringes of cultural institutions, often offering a trenchant critique of culture.

Visionaries brings together artists working in this honourable and challenging tradition; essentially those who explore with passion the territories of the spiritual, the religious and the human condition.

The exhibition will include works by Stanley Spencer and Cecil Collins of the twentieth century, mid-twentieth-century paintings by Norman Adams, Albert Herbert and Anthony Goble, later painters such as Peter Howson, Clive Hicks-Jenkins and Brian Whelan, and twenty-first-century artists such as the Chapman brothers, Billy Childish and Adam Neate.

The visionary tradition can also be confrontational – evoking the anger and stridency of the prophetic voice throughout history. The artist can be the outsider, the 'voice crying in the wilderness', the holy fool. For this reason, the exhibition includes performance artists whose work references this rich tradition.

The exhibition, curated by Wallspace will be on show at All Hallows from 19 May to 11 June. It will then travel to Greenbelt Arts Festival, at Cheltenham Racecourse, August Bank Holiday weekend, 25 to 31 August.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lou Reed & Victoria Williams - Tarbelly & Featherfoot.