ArtWay - Sidney Nolan: Angel over Ely

My latest Visual Meditation for ArtWay focuses on 'Angel over Ely' by Sidney Nolan:

'Sidney Nolan was one of Australia's best-known artists from the 20th century, his reputation resting primarily on paintings of Australian landscapes and legends from Australian history, most famously Ned Kelly, the bushranger and outlaw. However, his work is also among the most diverse in modern art, with images in a wide variety of mediums as he worked quickly in series and regularly innovated in his use of materials.

Angel over Ely was painted using ink and enamel on glass and is one of over 130 such paintings Nolan produced between 1948 and 1951. Nolan painted this image after a visit to Ely Cathedral in England during the winter of 1950–51, while staying with his wife Cynthia’s sister in Cambridge. The image represents the moment when religious symbolism returned to his repertoire, inspired by the thought of angels over the cathedral and a subsequent trip to Italy. The subject of floating or flying angels then recurs constantly in his magnificent religious series of 1951/52 set against an Australian outback landscape.

Nolan wrote to fellow artist Albert Tucker in 1951 saying: "Our trip to Europe forced a few vigorous conclusions on me. The outstanding one being that the painters who moved me most (El Greco & Giotto) seemed men primarily of faith."'

For more on Sidney Nolan see my preview for Artlyst of Sidney Nolan: Colour of the Sky – Auschwitz Paintings and Sidney Nolan's Africa, my interview with Andrew Turley.

My visual meditations 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, Lakwena Maciver, S. Billie Mandle, Giacomo Manzù, Michael Pendry, Maurice Novarina, Regan O'Callaghan, Ana Maria Pacheco, John Piper, Nicola Ravenscroft, Albert Servaes, Henry Shelton, Anna Sikorska, Jan Toorop, Edmund de Waal and Sane Wadu.

My Church of the Month reports include: All Saints Parish Church, Tudeley, 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.

Blogs for ArtWay include: Congruity and controversy: exploring issues for contemporary commissions;
Photographing Religious Practice; Spirituality and/in Modern Art; and The Spirituality of the Artist-Clown.

Interviews for ArtWay include: Sophie Hacker and Peter Koenig. I also interviewed ArtWay founder Marleen Hengelaar Rookmaaker for Artlyst.

I have 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 are here and those for Art+Christianity are here. See also
Modern religious art: airbrushed from art history?

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Love - Orange Skies.

Sabbatical art pilgrimage: Ely Cathedral

 

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Larry Norman - The Same Old Story.

Review - Exhibition of Works by Helaine Blumenfeld OBE: Tree of Life

My latest exhibition review for the Church Times covers “Exhibition of Works by Helaine Blumenfeld OBE: Tree of Life” which is at Ely Cathedral until 28 October:

'“Tree of Life” is one of Blumenfeld’s largest exhibitions to date. Her work is well suited to display in the setting of a cathedral, both because the works themselves are all about possibility and hope, healing, and renewal, and also as their luscious expanses of cream and white combine with the flow of their organic curves to contrast with the soaring vertical lines of Ely’s expanses.'

I have also written about Blumenfeld for Artlyst - click here to read.

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Joni Mitchell - Big Yellow Taxi.

Artlyst: 'Hard Beauty' and Helaine Blumenfeld

My latest piece for Artlyst is a review of ‘Hard Beauty’, the first film about the life and work of sculptor Helaine Blumenfeld which premiered on Sky Arts in April 2018:

'If Blumenfeld’s focus on beauty is one factor distancing her from a greater level of recognition in the world of contemporary art, then spirituality may be another. The film emphasises the extent to which Blumenfeld’s natural forms are also visionary. From an early age Blumenfeld has received the forms she now shapes into sculpture through her dreams. Clay is used as her malleable medium in which to capture what remains of these dreams before they fade.'

‘Tree of Life’, a major solo exhibition by Helaine Blumenfeld OBE is at Ely Cathedral until 28 October 2018.

My other Artlyst articles and interviews are:

• Alastair Gordon A Testament To His Faith
• Sacred Noise: Explores Religion, Faith And Divinity
• Bill Viola: Quiet Contemplative Video Installation St Cuthbert’s Church Edinburgh
• The ground-breaking work of Sister Corita Kent
• Katrina Moss Chaiya Art Awards Interview: Where is God in our 21st century world?
• Picasso To Souza: The Crucifixion Imagery Rarely Exhibited
• Apocalypse Now: Michael Takeo Magruder Interviewed
• Jonathan Anderson: Religious Inspirations Behind Modernism
• Michael Takeo Magruder: De / coding the Apocalypse – Panacea Museum
• Giorgio Griffa: The Golden Ratio And Inexplicable Knowledge
• Arabella Dorman Unveils New Installation At St James Church Piccadilly
• Can Art Transform Society?
• Art Awakening Humanity Conference Report
• Central St Martins in the Fields Design Then And Now
• The Sacramental And Liturgical Nature Of Conceptual Art
• Caravan – An Interview With Rev Paul Gordon Chandler On Arts Peacebuilding
• Art Awakening Humanity Alexander de Cadenet Interviewed
• Polish Art In Britain Centenary Marked At London’s Ben Uri Gallery
• Michael Pendry New Installation Lights Up St Martin In The Fields;
• Mark Dean Projects Stations of the Cross Videos On Henry Moore Altar;
• Refugee Artists Learning from The Lives Of Others;
• The Religious Impulses Of Robert Rauschenberg;
• The Christian Science Connection Within The British Modern Art Movement;
• Artists Rebranding The Christmas Tree Tradition;
• Art Impacted - A Radical Response To Radicalisation;
• The Art of St Martin-in-the-Fields; and
• Was Caravaggio A Good Christian?

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Gungor - Beautiful Things.

Windows on the world (376)

Ely, 2014

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Bob Dylan - Stand By Faith.

Passion 2015

Passion – a contemporary journey to the cross is a unique performance created and directed by accomplished dance artist and theologian Claire Henderson Davis, which fuses dance, poetry and music into a moving and compelling work.

Using poet Malcolm Guite’s sonnets on the Stations of the Cross as the basis for a contemporary re-telling of Jesus’ last hours, this fascinating piece will bring multi-disciplinary performance into sacred spaces. But there will be no cross or first century dress. This is a thoroughly modern re-imagining in which the bodies of the dancers tell the story, become the cross, play each character in the narrative, and in which the feminine and sexual love become symbols of the divine. The audience move with the action, becoming the crowd in this promenade performance.

The piece was developed with the support of Ely Cathedral and performed there on the evening of Palm Sunday 2014. The response was so overwhelming that it will be performed there again on the evening of Good Friday 2015, and will go on tour to other Cathedrals in Britain during Lent 2015, and to St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2015.

The Very Revd Mark Bonney, Dean of Ely, writes:

“Passion” is a creative combination of Malcolm Guite’s beautifully crafted Sonnets and some highly expressive and evocative dance. We were taken on a journey that was illuminating and challenging, that engaged our emotions as well as our intellect and which threw new light on a familiar story.

The piece is performed by Malcolm Guite (poet/ narrator), Claire Henderson Davis and Fraser Paterson (dancers), Jan Payne (oboist), and Dan Forshaw (saxophonist), with a group of non-professional women, some recruited locally at each venue, playing the Women of Jerusalem. 

Confirmed performance dates are: 21 February Lichfield Cathedral; 28 February London St John’s Church, Waterloo (the only non-Cathedral date); 7 March Coventry Cathedral; 12 March Chester Cathedral; 03 April (Good Friday) Ely Cathedral; 11-13 August Edinburgh St Mary’s Cathedral. Following each performance of Passion, Claire will return at a later date to offer a half-day workshop (four hours), giving participants a chance to enter for themselves this contemporary vision of relationship with God.

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Malcolm Guite - Stations Of The Cross.