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Showing posts with label cataphatic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cataphatic. Show all posts

Saturday, 26 June 2021

ArtWay Visual Meditation - Jake Flood: Reflection

My latest Visual Meditation for ArtWay is on Jake Flood's 'Reflection' from the Chaiya Art Awards 2021 winners exhibition:

'Flood’s image sets the square edged weir at the centre creating a space that is empty and dark. The apophatic tradition in Christianity maintains that the place of emptiness – both personally and through the renunciation of images – is the place of encounter with God. As several Psalms suggest darkness can be a covering for God and, also, our closest friend.

Fringing the central space are reflections of the Cathedral’s stained glass which lie beyond the sculpture, but which the water’s stillness enables us to glimpse. Although the centre of the image is empty and monochrome, Flood’s image shares with us the surrounding diversity of colour. We cannot fully see the stained glass or read its story but can see sufficient to appreciate its richness.'

My exhibition review for Church Times can be found at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2021/21-may/books-arts/visual-arts/chaiya-art-awards-god-is-at-gallery-oxo. See my article for Artlyst sharing reflections on the experience of having been a judge for the Chaiya Art Awards 2021. The reflection I shared on the Chaiya Art Awards 2021 in a Bread for the World service at St Martin-in-the-Fields can be found here. My Artlyst interview of Chaiya Art Awards founder Katrina Moss can be read here and my ArtWay visual meditation on the winning entry in the 2018 Awards is here.


My Church of the Month reports for ArtWay are: Aylesford Priory, Canterbury Cathedral, Chapel of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, Hem, Chelmsford Cathedral, Churches in Little Walsingham, 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,Romont, 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 Paul Goodmayes, as well as earlier reports of visits to sites associated with Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, Antoni Gaudi and Henri Matisse.

Interviews for ArtWay include: Sophie Hacker and Peter Koenig. I also interviewed ArtWay founder Marleen Hengelaar Rookmaaker for Artlyst. My blogs for ArtWay include: Photographing Religious Practice and Contemporary Commissions. I have also 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 here, and those for Art+Christianity are here.

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Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - Hand Of God.

Sunday, 4 April 2021

Artlyst - Sean Scully: Philosophical Poetic Pastoral, The 12 / Dark Windows

My latest article for Artlyst is a preview of Sean Scully: The 12 / Dark Windows in New York from 6 May:

"By placing a black square over Landline bands of colour, Scully brings both approaches to spirituality together; an integration of affirmation and negativity, the cataphatic and the apophatic... "Tragedy is part of spirituality,” he commented, standing next to Doric Nyx ... ‘I am not drawn to tragedy: I believe that it is always possible to overcome it and that in the end, a ray of light will shine through.’

The Dark Windows are a further meditation on tragedy. Scully says: ‘There is no doubt that they are a response to the pandemic and to what mankind has been doing to nature. What really strikes me as tragic is that what is a relief for nature is a torment for us. And what is a pleasure for us is a torment for nature. That seems to be the conundrum that we’ve got ourselves into.’ This new body of work serves as a reappraisal or a reckoning – not simply suggesting that while the dark clouds hover and we remain in darkness, the blight will soon be over, and the world will heal itself – rather the realisation that a ray of light will always shine through the darkness or, perhaps, as was the practice of Pierre Soulages, that light will be reflected from the black."

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -
Articles -
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Taylor Swift - Epiphany.