Encounter Series Videos

Encounter Series

The Autumn Lecture Series at St Martin-in-the-Fields featured lectures which focused on the theme of encounter. How are we changed by the people, events or objects we encounter when we meet them face-to-face? How do prejudices shift? How are new insights born? What inspires us to new ways of being and relating to God and to others? How do we become who we truly are through those we meet? How do we encounter God in our lives? In each of these lectures prominent and inspirational leaders, thinkers and practitioners speak from a personal but also public perspective about the way such encounters have changed the course of their lives.

This year, for the first time, we recorded the Autumn Lecture Series. Videos of Encounter 2018 are now available through our website. A study guide produced for churches wishing to use the videos with their congregations is available from jonathan.evens@smitf.org.


To watch Sam Wells introducing the Series click here


To watch Richard Carter introducing the speakers click here


To watch Rowan Williams Encountering the Other click here


To watch Christianity Encountering Islam (filmed at Baitul Futuh Mosque) click here


To Watch Encountering London click here


To watch Encountering Jesus of Nazareth
click here


To watch Encountering the Sacred click here


To watch Encountering God click here

The Encounters exhibition by Nicola Green which was shown at St Martin's during the Autumn Lecture Series is accompanied by a book published by Brepols publishers titled Encounters: The Art of Interfaith Dialogue.

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Struggles to contend with the Australian landscape

Australia is "the first major survey of Australian art in the UK for 50 years, this exhibition spans more than 200 years from 1800 to the present day and seeks to uncover the fascinating social and cultural evolution of a nation through its art. Two hundred works including painting, drawing, photography, watercolours and multimedia will shed light on a period of rapid and intense change; from the impact of colonisation on an indigenous people, to the pioneering nation building of the 19th century through to the enterprising urbanisation of the last 100 years."

Anthony Gormley comments: "When I think of Sidney Nolan, Fred Williams or Arthur Boyd, I think of harsh earth and fierce sunlight. Through its new occupiers, somehow Australia produced modernist vigour ... There is a directness in the Indigenous traditions, whether the dots of the Western Desert or the colour field paintings of the Great Sandy Desert, where pigment is used to carry mineral truth as well as lived feeling."

Leading Australian contemporary landscape painter Idris Murphy has said:

"I’m not interested in negotiating my way around Indigenous painting. I think it is going to be a problem – can the Western tradition sustain a view of the world? I mean, Peter Fuller used to talk about this when he came to Australia very briefly; he saw in Fred Williams and Sidney Nolan the potential for the ‘last great hurrah’ of the Northern Romantic tradition and I think there’s a lot of truth in what he said. I think it’s going to be a problem – it’s not a problem for me – I’m just lapping it up! Of course I’m not Indigenous but I love the idea of this great wonderful European tradition, which I belong to, fusing with Indigenous art – happening right under my nose, in my lifetime! And I can see that as a whole new sort of language base for contemporary painting."

It will be interesting to see if this show gives any sense of this new sort of language base that Murphy sees in contemporary Australian art. By contrast Adrian Searle has suggested that the show is strong on Aboriginal art and full of classics – but loses its way in modern times:

"The show peters out in a parade of examples, a checklist of single works hung cheek by jowl with no real coherence. There is too much that feels secondary, or like retreads of flavour-of-the-month international fashions.

 

I am certainly no expert on Australian art, but even I can tell that, however enlightening parts of the earlier sections are, the show fails to give a sense of any of the more recent art except in a tokenistic way."

 

The Guardian does have a helpful timeline of Australian art, however: A history of Australian art – interactive timeline.

 

Back at the RA, author Tim Winton will explore his belief that ‘Australia the place is constantly overshadowed by Australia the national idea. Undoubtedly the nation and its projects have shaped my education and my prospects, but the degree to which geography, distance and weather have moulded my sensory palate, my imagination and expectations is substantial. Landscape has exerted a kind of force upon me that is every bit as geological as family.’

In today's Guardian, Winton selects Fred Williams's Yellow Landscape, 1968-9 as his favourite artwork from his homeland:

"he renders the scale and mystery of the physical world by tiny marks. The forms and figures are like scars in the hide of a beast too big to properly conceive of, let alone see entire. All these wens and divots are without pattern and yet they bring to mind calligraphy. These are the marks, the messy, chaotic texture that even the practised eye struggles to contend with in the Australian landscape. Whether you're seeing it from the air or at ground level, this is what your senses struggle with in the open country, such flat planes worked over with hieroglyphics born of fire, erosion, meteor showers, drought and epochal passages of time. Here humans might seem incidental."

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Midnight Oil - Dreamworld.

Bath and Malmesbury

I've had a few days away in Bath and the surrounding area driving to a soundtrack of Mojo's latest cover CD, a complitation of Communion artists.
Communion was born in the Summer of 2006 at London’s Notting Hill Arts Club. Founded by Ben Lovett (Mumford and Sons), former Cherbourg bassist Kevin Jones, and acclaimed producer Ian Grimble, it quickly grew into a flourishing community of musicians and fans alike, providing a first independent platform for the freshest young artists on London’s circuit and beyond. The monthly night has now seen the likes of Noah and the Whale, Laura Marling, Mumford and Sons, JJ Pistolet and Peggy Sue all grace the stage from the very start of their fledgling careers. Communion Records was founded in September 2009 priding itself on creating a close working family in which to allow artists to develop at their own pace.

Bath's Fringe Festival added additional interest to our visit with several of the photos above taken in the FAB at the Officer's Club exhibitions. I also enjoyed seeing paintings by Cecil Collins and Graham Sutherland at the Victoria Art Gallery and the new extension to the Holburne Gallery (see photo above) but the exhibition highlight was definitely Helpless Angels at the bo.lee gallery which saw paintings by Fran Williams supplemented by the angel sculptures of other gallery artists. Williams' paintings deal in primal light-dark contrasts to suggest an emergent sense of the angelic in her distressed characters. Look out for the gallery's Shadowside London exhibition from 13th - 18th June at Blackall Studios Shoreditch.

Other forthcoming exhibitions that should be of interest include The Acts of the Apostles by Ulrich Lindow at Malmesbury Abbey from 19th June throughout the summer and Mark Angus: Flying Figures at the Victoria Art Gallery from 23 July - 2 October.

Sculptor Ulrich Lindow works in northern Germany near Malmesbury's twin town of Niebüll. His The Acts of the Apostles installation is described as "a dramatic re-enactment of the events narrated in the New Testament." Lindow has imagined a red glow from the tongues of flame reflected in the colouration of the rough hewn faces of his disciples (see photos above).

Originally from Bath, Mark Angus is one of Europe's best stained glass artists. His stunning work for churches and cathedrals in England and Germany is well known, but his freestanding glass figures - glowingly coloured diving and backlit figures exploring the theme of Eternal Youth - go on public view for the first time in the exhibition at the Victoria Art Gallery.

While in Malmesbury I also saw the Photographic Exhibition in the Town Hall, which includes excellent work by Betsy Little and Fred Goudie among others, and found a secondhand copy of Messenger of Beauty: The Life and Visionary Art of Nicholas Roerich.  Roerich was a Russian-born artist whose paintings explore the mythic origins, the natural beauty, and the spiritual strivings of humanity and of the world.

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Marcus Foster - Circle in the Square.