Margate & Turner Contemporary

 

 

Today I went to Turner Contemporary in Margate to visit 'Seeing Round Corners: The Art of the Circle,'  which explores the significance and symbolism of the circle and sphere in art and culture; architecture and engineering; astronomy and geometry; optics and perception; religion, spirituality and everyday life.

Featuring more than 100 works – from 3000BC to the present day, the exhibition brings together artworks and artefacts that reflect a vast range of themes and ideas from roundness, rotation and visual perception to wonderment and cycles of time. The exhibition encompasses sculpture, film, painting, design, installation, performance and photography, with works by leading historical and contemporary artists including Leonardo da Vinci, Paul Nash, Barbara Hepworth, JMW Turner, Theaster Gates, Rebecca Horn, David Shrigley and Bridget Riley.

Also at the Gallery are two major works by Yinka Shonibare MBE. Co-commissioned by Turner Contemporary and 14-18 NOW, Shonibare’s newest sculptural work 'End of Empire' explores how alliances forged in the First World War changed British society forever, and continue to affect us today. The new work features two figures dressed in the artist’s signature bright and patterned fabrics; their globe-heads highlighting the countries involved in the First World War. Seated on a Victorian see-saw, the entire work slowly pivots in the gallery space, offering a metaphor for dialogue, balance and conflict, while symbolising the possibility of compromise and resolution between two opposing forces.

Presented alongside this new commission is Shonibare’s 'The British Library,' a colourful work, celebrating and questioning how immigration has contributed to the British culture that we live in today. Shelves of books covered in colourful wax fabric fill the Sunley Gallery, their spines bearing the names of first and second generation immigrants who have enriched British society. From T.S. Eliot and Hans Holbein to Zaha Hadid, The British Library reminds us that the displacement of communities by global war has consequences that inform our lives and attitudes today.

In Margate Old Town \I saw work by David Bunting, Abbott van Dada, Jose Inacio Fonseca, Gay Gower and Luda Ludmila. Gower, Bunting and Fonseca were at King Street Art Gallery & Studio in a group show entitled 'The Eclectics' which is part of Thanet Open Studios. Dada and Ludmila are at the Pie Factory with a mixed media exhibition consisting of quality sculptured jewellery worked in solid gold and silver part of the new Dada collection along with his bespoke oak furniture, plus textured acrylics by Ludmila

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Morrissey - Everyday is like Sunday.

Truth is known in all tumbling clowns

For the Parish Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields last Sunday morning, our preacher was Pádraig Ó Tuama, Leader of the Corrymeela Community, a Christian movement working for reconciliation in Northern Ireland and throughout the world. At this service we were joined by members and supporters of the Corrymeela Community to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its foundation. This was followed by a lecture and discussion.

Pádraig was a softly-spoken but passionate, erudite and imaginative speaker. Poet, theologian and group worker, he has worked with groups in Ireland, Britain, the US and Australia. With interests in storytelling, groupwork, theology and conflict, he lectures, leads retreats and writes both poetry and prose.

Among the many insights he shared were his community prayer for courage and a wonderful poem by Patrick Kavanagh:

The Prayer of Courage

Courage comes from the heart

and we are always welcomed by God,
the Croí of all being.

We bear witness to our faith,

knowing that we are called 
to live lives of courage,
love and reconciliation in the ordinary and extraordinary
moments 
of each day.

We bear witness, too, to our failures

and our complicity in the fractures of our world.

May we be courageous today.
May we learn today.

May we love today.


Amen.

Untitled (The Circle is the Father)

The Circle is the Father 

Diameter His Son 

Spirit the mathematical centre 

Thus truth is known 

In all turning wheels 

In all tumbling clowns 

As in the firmament deeps 

Where the Prophet drowns. 

Blessed are the followers 

Of all wheel tracks 

Blessed the spoke-tortured 

Christ. The axe 

Traces a circle 

And in that trace 

Is the Power the Word 

And the Tortured Face.

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Pádraig Ó Tuama - Go In Pieces.