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Showing posts with label dorman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dorman. Show all posts

Saturday, 13 January 2018

Artlyst: St James Piccadilly - a series of innovative and provocative art installations

For my latest article for Artlyst I visited St James Piccadilly and saw work by Clinton Chaloner, Arabella Dorman and Emily Young:

'St James Piccadilly is one of the best loved churches in London. The congregation describe themselves as seeking to be inclusive, welcoming and adventurous, while their Rector, Revd Lucy Winkett, Chaplain to the Royal Academy of Arts, suggests that the ‘ungovernable and wholly independent spiritual reality that Christians call God, the generative presence that underpins the universe is the same spirit that inspires and invigorates the artist inside all of us who will not be told what to do or what to believe and who treasures our most precious human characteristic; imagination.’

As a result, it is no surprise to find the Arts as a significant contributor to the ministry which is undertaken in and from St James’ or to find that it has been the location for a series of innovative and provocative art installations, often during the major Christian festivals. I visited recently to see their latest installation, Suspension by Arabella Dorman, but their commitment to visual art is such that it was also possible to see the rawest set of nativity figures I have ever viewed and eight massive masterfully mysterious stone heads by Emily Young.'

My other Artlyst articles are:
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Luke Sital Singh - 21st Century Heartbeat.

Saturday, 26 December 2015

Flight & floe-fall lament


Lucy Winkett, the vicar of St James Piccadilly, says, 'Whatever the Victorian carols might say about oxen and midwinter snow, the approaching story of Christmas is of Mary and Joseph becoming refugees after giving birth in dangerous circumstances to a baby who grew up to change the course of world history. And the coming festival declares that the birth of Christ expresses something unutterably beautiful and redemptive about the renewing presence of God in the world. The real Christmas celebrates the divine in a humanity that is both messy and miraculous, a festival by no means sanitised from the blood and tears of the world. And this real Christmas story is this year is being played out in front of us in family after family climbing into boats to flee from tyranny.'

Two videos of the work can be viewed on the website showing the vessel used by refugees to reach the Greek island of Lesbos. One is by St James's member and film maker Carolyn Davies; and, the other, a time lapse film showing the 6 hour installation above the nave of St James's as part of Flight. The boat carried 62 refugees from Turkey.

Sara Mark writes: “ ‘Her floe-fall lament (COP21)’ was made by freezing 66 litres of water into an oil drum. I placed it in the central aisle of the church to cause maximum disruption to the usual events on Sunday and the constant amplified sound of the melt-water pouring into the oil barrel beneath was an insistent reminder of something happening in real-time elsewhere in the World.”

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