Ben Uri Gallery - Exodus & Exile: Migration Themes in Biblical Images

The Ben Uri Gallery have just shared a new online exhibition, Exodus & Exile: Migration Themes in Biblical Images, that I have curated for them and a related essay entitled Debt Owed to Jewish Refugee Art.

The exhibition, which is currently their Exhibition of the Week, includes a range of Biblical images from the Ben Uri Collection in order to explore migration themes through consideration of the images, the Bible passages which inspired them and the relationship between the two. This is because themes of identity and migration feature significantly in both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles and images from these Bibles are a substantive element of the Ben Uri Collection.

The combination of images and texts enables a range of different reflections, relationships and disjunctions to be explored. The result is that significant synergies can be found between the ancient texts and current issues. In this way, stories and images which may, at first, appear to be describing or defining specific religious doctrines can be seen to take on a shared applicability by exploring or revealing the challenges and changes bound up in the age-old experience of migration.

The Gallery write:

"We are delighted to present a new exhibition interpreting works from our collection titled Exodus and Exile. The survey has been curated by Revd Jonathan Evens who has a long-established parallel interest in art and faith and how they are mutually engaging. We are privileged to benefit from his scholarship and innate sensitivity and am sure you too will be inspired by his selection and commentary.

Guest curator, the Revd Jonathan Evens, has a long and distinguished interest in the visual arts and in particular the synergy between, and interpretation of, the artist, the symbolism and the underlying messages of the images created. We are honoured and grateful to Jonathan for investing much time and thought to partner with Ben Uri in this initiative and curate and write on this subject."

My essay Debt Owed to Jewish Refugee Art is an updated version of an article I originally wrote for Church Times looking at influential works by émigré Jewish artists that were under threat. The article mentions Ervin Bossanyi, Naomi Blake, Ernst Müller-Blensdorf, Hans Feibusch, and George Mayer-Marton, telling stories of the impact of migration on the work and reputations of these artists.

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Leonard Cohen - Born In Chains.

Rupert Loydell: The Tower of Babel

Mercurius magazine have recently published Rupert Loydell's essay and a selection of painting images from the Tower of Babel project he undertook in 2010-2012. The essay was first published as part of a box containg postcards, a paperback poetry anthology, and this essay in pamphlet form, by Like This Press. A limited edition in a wooden box also included a small original painting. The paintings were shown at Falmouth University and in Truro Cathedral.

The anthology of poems included features work by: Philip Terry, Sheila E Murphy, Andy Brown, rob mclennan, A.C. Evans, H.L. Hix, Angela Topping, Paul Sutton, Peter Dent, Camille Martin, Ian Seed, David H.W. Grubb, Seren Adams, Andrew Moorhead, Jane Routh, John Mingay, Luke Kennard, Steven Waling, Alan Halsey, Peter Gillies, Bill O’Brien, Mike Ferguson, David Hart, Martin Stannard, Rupert M. Loydell, Mark Goodwin, Natasha Loydell, and Ira Lightman.

Loydell is Senior Lecturer in the School of Writing and Journalism at Falmouth University, the editor of Stride magazine, and contributing editor to International Times. He is a widely published poet whose most recent poetry books are Dear Mary (Shearsman, 2017) and A Confusion of Marys (Shearsman, 2020). He has edited anthologies for Salt, Shearsman and KFS, written for academic journals such as Punk & Post-Punk (which he is on the editorial board of), New Writing, Revenant, The Journal of Visual Art Practice, Text, Axon, Musicology Research, Short Fiction in Theory and Practice, and contributed to Brian Eno. Oblique Music (Bloomsbury, 2016), Critical Essays on Twin Peaks: The Return (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Music in Twin Peaks: Listen to the Sounds (Routledge, 2021) and Bodies, Noise and Power in Industrial Music (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). His paintings were first shown in Northern Young Contemporaries 1985, and since then he has had solo exhibitions in the UK, USA and Russia, and art in numerous group shows.

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News From Babel - Arcades (Of Glass)

'Crucifixions: Francis Bacon' - catalogue and video

Following the 'Crucifixions: Francis Bacon' exhibition at St Stephen Walbrook, Daniel Bourke has created a video based on my reflections on the art of Francis Bacon. The video is now on websites of St Stephen Walbrook and the London Internet Church.

The catalogue for 'Crucifixions: Francis Bacon', including my essay, is now available online at the website for “The Francis Bacon Collection of the drawings donated to Cristiano Lovatelli Ravarino”.

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Rickie Lee Jones - Gethsemene.

Statements on the EU Referendum result

On the St Martin-in-the-Fields website, Sam Wells states:

'We now face a new future grateful to be in a democracy where the people’s voice speaks – even when it says what many experience as horrifying. The decision means the nation will leave the EU; it doesn’t automatically mean a war on immigration or economic catastrophe; it must not be allowed to bring about a rise in intolerance and exclusion. It’s up to the whole country now to show that what we have in common is greater than what divides us.'

Angus Ritchie asks some apposite questions of those of us who voted to remain and view the prospect of Brexit as horrifying:

'By far the best piece I have read on the referendum is John Harris's extended essay in The Guardian. Harris, who voted to Remain, warns at the "deep anger and seething worry" which has gripped so much of the country, outside the economic powerhouse of London ...

Harris demands that we listen to a world beyond the metropolitan and middle-class. It is easy to denounce the "bigotry" of the Leave campaign without acknowledging one's own social and economic location. Remainers need to be careful not to fall into our own Pharasaism, for we have sins which require repentance. We speak of social solidarity now, but how much has it inspired us to action on behalf of those in our own land who have been left behind by capitalism? And, when we have acted, have we been motivated by a genuine desire for change or by a shallow self-righteousness - more interested in signalling our virtue than in achieving genuine change?

It is tempting to respond to this week's vote with shrill denunciations, flattering ourselves that this counts as a "prophetic" response. But Harris's essay suggests a more appropriate reaction. We need, first of all, to listen - and to listen in particular from the Nazareths of England and Wales; the unglamorous, left-behind places, which modern capitalism does not value.

For, as these areas will soon discover, the triumph of the Leave campaign is unlikely to address their plight. The challenge for Christians (however we voted in the referendum) is to listen to their genuine and justified grievances, and to help them organise for justice - making common cause with the migrant communities which the worst of the Leave campaign encouraged them to scapegoat.'

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Beth Rowley - Nobody's Fault But Mine.

Sabbatical art pilgrimage: St Peter Gorleston-on-Sea

St Peter Gorleston is, the words of Andrew Anderson writing in 1960 for the Eastern Daily Press, 'a simple church' with 'plain red brick walls and gables, steep curly tiled roofs with the neatest flashings, sturdy well-made buttresses, leaden downpipes and large wooden box gutters with sparrows chirping about.' The tower is 'capped by slanting gables, cross on top and with a steeply pointed three part window in each face of the tower.'

Bill Howell, long-time church member and author of the church guide, explained to me that that is precisely how its designer Eric Gill planned it should be; 'a plain building done by bricklayers and carpenters' without recourse to 'mechanical town methods.' All very much in line with Gill's lifelong belief that workers should be the owners of their own production and not slaves to the profits of others.

Gill's minimalism extended inside his design as well with his intent being 'no ornaments except perhaps a figure of St Peter on the outside and a large crucifix hanging over the altar';. 'the choir and the organ, the vestments and the stained glass windows, the paintings and the statues, all are so much frippery compared with the altar and the service of the altar' ('Mass for the Masses'). Accordingly, his design began with a centrally located altar and worked outwards from there using a cruciform plan. In his essay 'Plain Architecture' he stated that 'a church is there first and chiefly as a canopy over an altar.' Here the altar was 'placed centrally beneath the tower, which was supported on crossing arches; arches are used throughout the church, with little or no lintels spanning doors or windows.' 'Arcades and porch too are arches springing directly from the sub-floor, not supported on piers as is usual in churches' (Church Guide).

What arches they are too! 'Striding about the place,' as Anderson evocatively puts it, intersecting centrally in pleasing geometric interlacings to create the 'roomy space' needed for the altar and to bear on their shoulder the light well that is the tower. Rightly all in white, they remind the viewer of Antoni Gaudi's use of parabolic and catenary arches, particularly at the School of the Teresianas. Gill, despite his own architectural training in the office of W.D. Caröe from 1899 - 1903 and the support of High Wycombe architect Edmund Farrell, must have had concerns regarding the viability of these arches. During one visit he asked the builders to leave the wooden arch supports in place for longer to ensure they had set. When Gill left, the supports were immediately removed without any ill effect.

Gill was asked to undertake the design by his friend Fr. Thomas Walker, who he had got to know in High Wycombe. Gill had moved to Piggotts, near High Wycombe, in 1928: ‘Here he aimed to create a ‘cell of good living’ – a community centred on home and chapel, workshops, farm and a little school on the top of a Chiltern hill. Here he attracted followers: his apprentices, included David Kindersley, sculptor and engraver (and father of Peter Kindersley, co-founder of Dorling-Kindersley, the publishers); the Cribbs and Anthony Foster. Visiting friends included G.K. Chesterton, Stanley Spencer, David Jones and Peter Kapista. Amongst the best known work Gill produced at Piggotts are the figures of Prospero and Ariel on the front façade of the BBC in London (1932); the vast ‘Creation of Adam’ sculpture at the League of Nations building in Geneva (1938); and the large-scale East Wind sculpture that hovers over St James's Underground station’.

Walker had become parish priest to a congregation at Gorleston which had outgrown their original building, a converted malthouse. For Gill this was an opportunity to put his practical and theological ideas about church, which were ahead of their time, into bricks and mortar. Prior to Vatican II, St Peter's was only the second Roman Catholic Church in the country to have a central altar. We can imagine Gill’s excitement at the opportunity as he wrote to his friend George Carey, 'no sooner was the essay ('Mass for the Masses') published then I got a real job, to build a real church with a central altar and all.'

The radical minimalism and focus of Gill's design has been too much for the parish as a whole and some subsequent priests to manage. As he showed me around Bill sadly recounted a litany of changes made over the years to Gill's original design (some thankfully rectified) including the turning of the altar, raising of the crucifix, over painting of the tower mural, introduction of stained glass, hanging of a baldachin, and more. Some of the changes have been done sensitively and by using colleagues of Gill such as Denis Tegetmeier and Joseph Edward Nuttgens, while others were, as Howells makes scathingly clear in the Church Guide, simply crass. The church is now Grade II listed and, while Bill complains about the levels of bureaucracy this involves, the building is protected against the vagaries of individuals exercising their own personal and subjective 'good' taste.

Gill designed the rood, piscina, font, altars and holy water stoups. These were all made in his workshop. The foundation stone and altar inscription are good examples of Gill's lettering. Gill also designed the Entry into Jerusalem mural for the spandrel of the east arch and the low relief carving of St Peter casting his net for the porch. His son in law Tegetmeier painted the mural, while Anthony Foster carved St Peter. Tegetmeier also contributed a set of excellent and original 'Stations of the Cross' in 1962. The stained glass window designed by Nuttgens and representing Christ the King was installed in 1963. While a strong piece of work in its own right, its placement in this building goes counter to Gill's plain design with the window literally obscured by the focus on the central altar and its low slung crucifix.

Malcolm Yorke writes in 'Man of Flesh and Spirit' that today this church seems less remarkable then it once did but that, he concludes, 'is probably a tribute to Gill whose ideas on liturgy and plain architecture have come into their own.' Bill Howells notes several statements to do with more contemporary churches of which Gill would probably have approved. Cardinal Heenan writing about the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King in Liverpool suggested that the 'attention of all who enter should be arrested and held by the altar.' That was because Sir Frederick Gibberd, the architect, realised the brief he was given, 'not to draw attention to the cathedral's own beauty; it was there to shelter the High Altar, which was to be the main focus.' 

Gill, sadly, did not live to see these ideas take hold; he died of cancer two after the completion of St Peter's. He would have been rather less enamoured of the difficulties that the parish currently face in maintaining this splendid and significant sacred space.

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Moby - Hymn.

Rupert Loydell: The Tower of Babel

The Tower of Babel by Rupert Loydell is a limited edition hand-stamped book-in-a-box, including a set of 24 original print postcards, an essay, and an anthology of poems. A deluxe edition in an edition of 25 with original art is also available.

The anthology of poems included features work by: Philip Terry, Sheila E Murphy, Andy Brown, rob mclennan, A.C. Evans, H.L. Hix, Angela Topping, Paul Sutton, Peter Dent, Camille Martin, Ian Seed, David H.W. Grubb, Seren Adams, Andrew Moorhead, Jane Routh, John Mingay, Luke Kennard, Steven Waling, Alan Halsey, Peter Gillies, Bill O’Brien, Mike Ferguson, David Hart, Martin Stannard, Rupert M. Loydell, Mark Goodwin, Natasha Loydell, and Ira Lightman.

Available from January 2013, the individually numbered special edition of 25 wooden boxes including one original painting costs £30 while the limited edition of 500 cardboard boxes costs £15. Enquiries to: nikolai@likethispress.co.uk and orders at: likethispress.co.uk/publications/rupertloydell.

Rupert Loydell is Lecturer in Creative Writing at University College Falmouth. He studied painting and writing at degree level and later specialised in creative writing for his MA. He is particularly interested in process and collaborative writing, and has several books of collaborative poems and poem-sequences in print, as well as volumes of his own solo writing such as An Experiment in Navigation (published by Shearsman). Rupert is the editor of Stride, an online magazine with a worldwide readership, and he also writes book and music reviews for several magazines.

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Mumford and Sons - Babel.

No room for complacency

Daniel Trilling has an excellent article in today's Guardian where he lists 10 dangerous misconceptions about the far right.

The British far-right should be having a ball. With the economy faltering, austerity biting and economic pessimism growing, the conditions for racism and racist scapegoating could hardly be better. But, as Nick Lowles and Matthew Collins report in their essay on the current state of the British far right, racist groups are contracting and morale is dropping.

Their essay concludes: “The British far right is fragmented and bitterly divided and in the short term this will continue. While we might enjoy the short-term respite there is no room for complacency. Sooner or later the traditional far-right, in the guise of the BNP or EDL, or the Radical Right, in the guise of UKIP, will re-emerge as a major political threat. In the meantime, we should brace ourselves for an upsurge in organised and unorganised racist and political violence.”

They have written this essay to help HOPE not hate decide a strategy for the next couple of years. Over the next few weeks their website will host a discussion on the future of the far right and to help shape their response. They would appreciate our views.

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Ben Harper - Like A King.

Modern Religious Art

My reflections from the concluding post of my 'Airbrushed from Art History' series of posts have been published on the Modern Religious Art website as 'Modern Religious Art: airbrushed from art history?'
Modern Religious Art  displays and encourages the work of contemporary artists who are in some way motivated by or engaged with the religious. The motivation for the site was driven by artist Christopher Clack's interest in 'religious art' and exploring the possibility of a ‘Modern Religious Art’.

Clack writes:

"The possibility of a religious art in  the modern world will be for many people a complete impossibility, and I can understand why they may think this. One reason is the unpopularity (with some good reason) of formal religion and anything that may seem to support it, but also the development of art itself with its overall tendency to remove all meaning exterior to it,  all meta -narratives. The grand narratives of the old religions taken as ‘ the truth’ would be considered a straight jacket for any contemporary artist.
 
But there are broadly two reasons I do not rule out the possibility. One, I believe the religious impulse will not just go away, and that we need to improve our  understanding of this  impulse, and importantly not confuse it with formal religions.

Two, the nature of art and creativity itself. The way that contemporary art has developed, I would argue, has in fact brought it closer to the origins and nature of the religious impulse ...

In much contemporary art practice we are not given answers, we are given images and word games. Contemporary art attempts to move us away from the everyday, to break down our ideas and preconceptions.

Our artists  in someway expect us to be able to live with their inexplicable contents, to live with the inexplicable.

'What does it mean' is not the appropriate question in relation to contemporary art, but how does it alter my perceptions, does it open things up."
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Elbow - Jesus Is A Rochdale Girl.