Online exhibitions and visual meditations

Here's an update about the online exhibitions I have curated with the Ben Uri Gallery and the Visual Commentary on Scripture. These include visual meditations on the artworks included. I have also written visual meditations for ArtWay, so these are also included in this post.

The fourth exhibition I have curated for the Visual Commentary on Scripture (VCS) is now live on the VCS website. 'Before the Deluge' is a series of climate-focused commentaries on Genesis 6 looking at 'The Flood' by Norman Adams, 'Noah in the Ark and a Church' by Albert Herbert, and 'Noah's Ark' by Sadao Watanabe.

My first exhibition for the VCS was 'Back from the Brink' on Daniel 4: 'Immediately the word was fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men, and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers, and his nails were like birds’ claws.' (Daniel 4:33). In the exhibition I explore this chapter with William Blake's 'Nebuchadnezzar', 1795–c.1805, Arthur Boyd's 'Nebuchadnezzar's Dream of the Tree', 1969, and Peter Howson's 'The Third Step', 2001.

My second exhibition was 'A Question of Faith' and explored Hebrews 11 through the paintings of New Zealand artist Colin McCahon. McCahon is widely recognised as New Zealand’s foremost painter. Over 45 years, his work encompassed many themes, subjects and styles, from landscape to figuration to abstraction and an innovative use of painted text. His adaption of aspects of modernist painting to a specific local situation and his intense engagement with spiritual matters, mark him out as a distinctive figure in twentieth-century art.

My third exhibition was 'Fishers of People'. This exhibition uses Damien Hirst's 'Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purpose of Understanding (Left) and (Right)', John Bellany's 'Kinlochbervie', and Paul Thek's 'Fishman in Excelsis Table' to discuss Matthew 4:12-22 and Mark 1:14-20. These artworks give us what is essentially a collage of the kingdom whereby we are invited to imagine the kingdom of God as a body of water in which Christians are immersed and through which they are raised.

The VCS is a freely accessible online publication that provides theological commentary on the Bible in dialogue with works of art. It helps its users to (re)discover the Bible in new ways through the illuminating interaction of artworks, scriptural texts, and commissioned commentaries. The virtual exhibitions of the VCS aim to facilitate new possibilities of seeing and reading so that the biblical text and the selected works of art come alive in new and vivid ways.

Each section of the VCS is a virtual exhibition comprising a biblical passage, three art works, and their associated commentaries. The curators of each exhibition select artworks that they consider will open up the biblical texts for interpretation, and/or offer new perspectives on themes the texts address. The commentaries explain and interpret the relationships between the works of art and the scriptural text.

Find out more about the VCS, its exhibitions and other resources through a short series of HeartEdge workshops introducing the VCS as a whole and exploring particular exhibitions with their curators. These workshops can be viewed here, here, here and here.

I have also curated an online exhibition for the Ben Uri Gallery which is entitled Exodus & Exile: Migration Themes in Biblical Images. The exhibition 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 said: "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."

Alongside the exhibition is an essay Debt Owed to Jewish Refugee Art, 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.

Following the launch of the exhibition, I wrote an article 'How the incomer’s eye sees identity' for Seen and Unseen explaining how curating an exhibition for the Ben Uri Gallery & Museum gave me the chance to highlight synergies between ancient texts and current issues.

ArtWay's visual meditations are devoted to one work of art, old or new, made by a Christian artist or not, from Europe, North-America or another part of the world. They advocate a thoughtful engagement with art and culture over against an uninformed rejection or uncritical embrace. While dealing with works of art, they have an eye for the form as well as the content. To them an important aspect of this content is formed by the spiritual dimension of a work, whether Christian, Buddhist, or postmodern. They especially look for voices of truth, hope and love in the art of the past and the present, whether or not by Christian hand.

My visual meditations for ArtWay 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, Gwen John, Lakwena Maciver, S. Billie Mandle, Giacomo Manzù, Sidney Nolan, Michael Pendry, Maurice Novarina, Regan O'Callaghan, Ana Maria Pacheco, John Piper, Nicola Ravenscroft, Albert Servaes, Henry Shelton, Anna Sikorska, Alan Stewart, Jan Toorop, Andrew Vessey, Edmund de Waal and Sane Wadu. The index for all my contributions to ArtWay, including my Visual Meditations, can be viewed by clicking here.

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Magna Carta - Lord Of The Ages.

Visual Commentary on Scripture - 'Before the Deluge'

The fourth exhibition I have curated for the Visual Commentary on Scripture (VCS) is now live on the VCS website. 'Before the Deluge' is a series of climate-focused commentaries on Genesis 6 looking at 'The Flood' by Norman Adams, 'Noah in the Ark and a Church' by Albert Herbert, and 'Noah's Ark' by Sadao Watanabe.

My first exhibition for the VCS was 'Back from the Brink' on Daniel 4: 'Immediately the word was fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men, and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers, and his nails were like birds’ claws.' (Daniel 4:33). In the exhibition I explore this chapter with William Blake's 'Nebuchadnezzar', 1795–c.1805, Arthur Boyd's 'Nebuchadnezzar's Dream of the Tree', 1969, and Peter Howson's 'The Third Step', 2001.

My second exhibition was 'A Question of Faith' and explored Hebrews 11 through the paintings of New Zealand artist Colin McCahon. McCahon is widely recognised as New Zealand’s foremost painter. Over 45 years, his work encompassed many themes, subjects and styles, from landscape to figuration to abstraction and an innovative use of painted text. His adaption of aspects of modernist painting to a specific local situation and his intense engagement with spiritual matters, mark him out as a distinctive figure in twentieth-century art.

My third exhibition was 'Fishers of People'. This exhibition uses Damien Hirst's 'Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purpose of Understanding (Left) and (Right)', John Bellany's 'Kinlochbervie', and Paul Thek's 'Fishman in Excelsis Table' to discuss Matthew 4:12-22 and Mark 1:14-20. These artworks give us what is essentially a collage of the kingdom whereby we are invited to imagine the kingdom of God as a body of water in which Christians are immersed and through which they are raised.

The VCS is a freely accessible online publication that provides theological commentary on the Bible in dialogue with works of art. It helps its users to (re)discover the Bible in new ways through the illuminating interaction of artworks, scriptural texts, and commissioned commentaries. The virtual exhibitions of the VCS aim to facilitate new possibilities of seeing and reading so that the biblical text and the selected works of art come alive in new and vivid ways.

Each section of the VCS is a virtual exhibition comprising a biblical passage, three art works, and their associated commentaries. The curators of each exhibition select artworks that they consider will open up the biblical texts for interpretation, and/or offer new perspectives on themes the texts address. The commentaries explain and interpret the relationships between the works of art and the scriptural text.

Find out more about the VCS, its exhibitions and other resources through a short series of HeartEdge workshops introducing the VCS as a whole and exploring particular exhibitions with their curators. These workshops can be viewed here, here, here and here.

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The Fire Theft - Sinatra.

ArtWay Visual Meditation - Jake Flood: Reflection

My latest Visual Meditation for ArtWay is on Jake Flood's 'Reflection' from the Chaiya Art Awards 2021 winners exhibition:

'Flood’s image sets the square edged weir at the centre creating a space that is empty and dark. The apophatic tradition in Christianity maintains that the place of emptiness – both personally and through the renunciation of images – is the place of encounter with God. As several Psalms suggest darkness can be a covering for God and, also, our closest friend.

Fringing the central space are reflections of the Cathedral’s stained glass which lie beyond the sculpture, but which the water’s stillness enables us to glimpse. Although the centre of the image is empty and monochrome, Flood’s image shares with us the surrounding diversity of colour. We cannot fully see the stained glass or read its story but can see sufficient to appreciate its richness.'

My exhibition review for Church Times can be found at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2021/21-may/books-arts/visual-arts/chaiya-art-awards-god-is-at-gallery-oxo. See my article for Artlyst sharing reflections on the experience of having been a judge for the Chaiya Art Awards 2021. The reflection I shared on the Chaiya Art Awards 2021 in a Bread for the World service at St Martin-in-the-Fields can be found here. My Artlyst interview of Chaiya Art Awards founder Katrina Moss can be read here and my ArtWay visual meditation on the winning entry in the 2018 Awards is here.

My other visual meditations for ArtWay include work by María Inés Aguirre, Giampaolo Babetto, Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Alexander de Cadenet, Christopher Clack, Marlene Dumas, Terry Ffyffe, 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 and Edmund de Waal.

My Church of the Month reports for ArtWay are: 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.

Interviews for ArtWay include: Sophie Hacker and Peter Koenig. I also interviewed ArtWay founder Marleen Hengelaar Rookmaaker for Artlyst. My blogs for ArtWay include: Photographing Religious Practice and Contemporary Commissions. I have also 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 here, and those for Art+Christianity are here.

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Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - Hand Of God.

Where to find the signs of God in our world?

Here's the reflection I shared in tonight's Bread for the World service at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Where to find the signs of God in our world? The Chaiya Art Awards winners exhibition features 50 visual artists all exploring the theme of God Is… and encouraging us to look beyond, to discern what cannot be seen and grasp what cannot be described.

The God is... exhibition is an invitation to enter a liminal space where life’s pain and pleasure dissolve, where questions and answers fade into shadow, where the indefinable lies, a treasure waiting to be found. Ann Clifford, who wrote the book accompanying the exhibition says, ‘The artists featured invite us to muse with them about their journey, laying before us a heartland of fullness. They reduce, simplify, purify and attempt to align themselves with that which is beyond complete expression.’

‘It is a part of the human condition to question our existence; to wonder, to imagine and to try to make sense of the world we inhabit, how we came to be here and what will happen to us when we die.’ ‘The sound of diverse voices filled with questions rumbles over the land like the gathering of an exquisite murmuration of starlings. The threads of God woven into ordinary everyday lives are seen in so many ways – kindness, respect for others, our visceral responses to nature and, oh, so much more. However many find answers, the questioning sound will never die.’

Lesley Sutton, the exhibition’s curator, reminds us that: ‘Art enables us to think and question not just with our minds, but also through our bodies, our senses. As viewers, our eyes meet the emotions of the artists, their colour palettes revealing personal narratives. Some speak of pain and suffering, questioning where God is when days are dark and He seems to have abandoned us. Others have used brightly coloured canvases of cerulean blue, gilded squares or intricately carved sculptures to invite us to delight in the beauty of the world we call home. Yet others have chosen to remind us of our responsibility as caretakers of the earth and sea and all its inhabitants.’

In the silence and stillness of contemplating art we unlock ourselves to fresh experiences, for which, perhaps, we have no language. Pondering God and the concept of His being is heady and surprising. Yet, if God is real, we should expect Him to reveal Himself. There are many places in which signs of God are revealed. For some it is found in the silence. For others, the natural world. For Moses, in the biblical story, it was a non-burning burning bush that caught his attention. What will capture our attention?

For the artist in this exhibition 'God is …’ a mystery explored through canvas and paper, photographs and video, others cloth and stitch; 3D metalwork and pottery; bronze and stone sculpture; glass and pipework; and a movement sensitive robot alongside an interactive sign with sonic sensors.

Here are three images that particularly spoke to me. Anne Smith fashioned from recycled fabrics, string, and threads a celebration of Brendan, a homeless man she knew. Although the homeless people she met weekly occupied little space in the world, she noticed the importance to them of their makeshift outfits. Her patchwork brings scraps and fragments of cloth together, and her sewn black line, depicting Brendan’s gentle face and pure eyes, is suffused and stitched with love. This recycled quilt reveals the face of God as surely as Veronica’s veil or the dream of St Martin. Anne says, Artists are alert to glimpses of unvarnished reality which can become moments of revelation …. In [Brendan’s] politeness, trust, his gentle face and pure eyes, I saw the face of God.’

Fiona Morley’s wire-sculptured face You are everything – the overall winning work - also links and unites in order to fashion a figure. Animals, insects, amphibians, and birds form an iconic ancestral face: an interconnected and evolving creation, culminating in an image of God. Fiona Morley has said: ’I belong to no particular religion, yet believe we are all part of something which could be named God. God is not separate from life. Through portraying the diversity of the animal kingdom in the face, I represent the consciousness and perception of our own lives, and interconnectedness with all other life – the closest explanation/experience of what God is.’

Jake Flood’s photograph Reflection is of Vesqua, a sculpture by William Pye which was among 70 contemporary sculptures installed in Gloucester Cathedral for Crucible 2 in 2014. Vesqua remained there until Easter 2015 when it was used as a font to baptise several people.

Water is the predominant feature of Vesqua, its surface reflecting and extending the surrounding architecture. Surface tension maintains a flat disc of apparently still water at a level that is perceptibly higher than the rim of its bronze container. A significant flow of water enters the vessel and as this rises turbulence disappears to give an effect of stillness, despite the fact that some 135 litres of water per minute are slipping down the throat of a square internal weir that draws water down to a reservoir below. In this way, two contrasting aspects of water are woven seamlessly together: stillness expressed in the reflecting surface, and the flow and movement though the square edged weir.

Flood has said that: ‘The reflections edging the font mirror the ancient stories expressed in the surrounding stained glass. The centre is empty, offering a space to reflect and connect with God. I don’t believe in any deity, but working with survivors of slavery, moments of reflection, silence and stillness have expanded to enable community, cooperation and the beginnings of new stories – maybe that is God.’

Flood’s image sets the square edged weir at the centre creating a space that is empty and dark. The apophatic tradition in Christianity maintains that the place of emptiness – both personally and through the renunciation of images – is the place of encounter with God. As several Psalms suggest darkness can be a covering for God and also our closest friend. Fringing the central space as reflections of the Cathedral’s stained glass which lie beyond the sculpture but which the water’s stillness enables us to glimpse. Although the centre of the image is empty and monochrome, Flood’s image shares with us the surrounding diversity of colour. We cannot fully see the stained glass or read its story but can see sufficient to appreciate its richness.

Stillness and turbulence are core to Pye’s sculpture and feature, too, in Flood’s reflection. Turbulence, in working with survivors of slavery. Stillness, in moments of reflection during art therapy that enables connection. Flood has created an image that is both apophatic and cataphatic and which reveals that God is absence and presence, stillness and disturbance, central and beyond. In these ways Flood’s image encourages us to look beyond, to discern what cannot be seen and grasp what cannot be described.

God is the politeness, trust, gentleness and purity found in Brendan. God is the diversity of the animal kingdom and the interconnections between humanity and creation in You are everything. God is affirmation and negative, the darkness at the centre and the colour that surrounds in Reflection. Tonight’s Word on the Edge (1 John 1.5, 3.18-20, 4.7-16) added that God is love and light and greater than our hearts.

John Donne, the poet-priest, said: ‘My God, my God … You are a figurative, a metaphorical God … a God in whose words there is such a height of figures, such voyages … to fetch remote and precious metaphors, such extensions, such spreadings, such curtains of allegories … and such things in your words … you are the Dove that flies.’ When God contains such extensions, such spreadings, such curtains of allegories, we certainly do not understand all that God is or is not, yet, as with this exhibition, God asks us to set aside time, shut out all distractions, revive our senses, and explore, perhaps with these artworks selected as a map to our journey. If you are seeking hidden treasure, the promise is to seek and you will find.

Earlier we heard Anne Smith say that artists are alert to glimpses of unvarnished reality which become moments of revelation. As we reflect on this exhibition I want to challenge you to become artists by becoming alert to God in the people you meet, alert to the interconnections between ourselves and creation, and alert to images and places that open us up to the beyond. I wonder what are the ‘God is… images that you might create as you notice and attend to those signs of God around us? Whether you are able to join our listening groups after this service or not, I want to encourage you to take that idea away with you and make your own ‘God is…’ images in the weeks to come based on what you see around you. In the moments or people you notice, the realities to which you pay attention, we will come to see the face of God.

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Love Is His Word, Love Is His Way.

Inspired to follow: Moses writing the Book of Genesis

What does it mean to follow Jesus today? How can I deepen my faith in God?

Inspired to Follow: Art and the Bible Story is a programme of hour-long gatherings over three terms which covers the Biblical story from Creation to Apocalypse. It uses fine art paintings that can be found on St Martin-in-the-Fields' doorstep as a springboard for exploring these two questions.

Today I gave the following reflection as part of this series:

JMW Turner was one of the greatest British artists whose desire to paint extreme weather conditions – blazing sun and swirling storm - resulted in Romantic art which also anticipated Impressionism and Abstract Expressionism. His commitment to realism was such that he once had himself lashed to a ship’s mast for four hours in order to observe the actual conditions of a storm. This painting ('Light and Colour (Goethe’s Theory) - the Morning after the Deluge - Moses Writing the Book of Genesis') is one of a pair; the first being 'Shade and Darkness - The Evening of the Deluge', also in the Tate’s collection and which depicts the storm on the evening of the Flood.

By contrast this image depicts the calm after the storm in the form of “an explosion of sunlight which brilliantly exploits the warm side of the spectrum.” Turner’s title indicates that he has multiple ideas in mind with this image including colour theories which enable him to depict the sunrise, the Flood imagery that we have just mentioned and Moses writing the Torah (the first five books of the Bible, including Genesis), which is our focus for today. Light, in Turner’s paintings, becomes “a singular, haunting presence,” with the paintings literally drenched in light. The sun, was for Turner, the living core of all of nature, so much so that he is reputed to have said on his deathbed, “The sun is god”.

So, we have a painting in which God is depicted through the medium of light with Moses set within this corona of light whilst writing the Torah. Our readings from Exodus show the appropriateness of this unusual imagery because, after Moses has been in the presence of God on Mount Sinai to receive the Law, his face shines with the light of God; so much so, that he puts a veil over his face whenever he is not speaking with the Israelites. Turner’s painting gives us a sense of what this story suggests; that the experience of being in the presence of God irradiated Moses in a way which meant that he reflected something of God’s light.

At Mount Sinai the Israelites, as a whole, had been given the chance to become a nation of priests enjoying the kind of intimate, direct relationship with God that Moses developed. God offered the opportunity to draw the Israelites as a whole into an intimate relationship with him where they would be able (as happens to Moses in his relationship with God) to debate, argue and influence God and where they are not simply obeying an external set of rules but have internalised God’s framework for life and live freely within it (Jeremiah 31: 33 & 34). God’s vision for the Israelites’ relationship with him (Exodus 19: 6) is that they are all to be priests and, therefore, will be able to come directly into his presence.

He provides the tools to make this happen through the Law (Exodus 20: 1–17). The Law was not intended to be used just in terms of its literal external application but to operate as a developmental process enabling the People of Israel to learn what is the heart and spirit of the Law; that is love (love of God, our neighbours and ourselves). Limits are what parents set while they are teaching their children how to respond to the situations with which life will confront them. When they have learnt, they no longer need the external limits because they have internalised and can utilise these lessons. 

An analogy is that of a child learning to cross the road. Parents firstly lay down strict limits on what the child can and cannot do. Then the child is taught how to cross the road in safety. But when the child has learnt how to judge distance and speed then s/he is free to cross the road wherever s/he judges it is safe to do so and is no longer restricted to recognised crossing places. In the way that both the prophets and Jesus use the Law we see this developmental process in use because in their interpretations of the Law they consistently emphasise the core/the spirit/the fulfilment of the Law, not its external application (see, for example, Amos 5: 21 - 24 and Matthew 5: 17 - 48).

The people of Israel, at Sinai, are offered the opportunity to live in conversation with God, by moving beyond the literal and structure-legitimating application of the Law to the embrace of love that is its essence and core. The people refuse this deeper level of relationship with God whilst still promising to obey him (Exodus 20: 18 – 19). They ask that Moses enters into this intimate relationship with God on their behalf and then reports back. Instead of the intimate encounter they choose a contractual relationship saying to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die” (Exodus 20: 19). This then becomes the pattern for God’s relationship with the people of Israel throughout the Old Testament. They relate to God legalistically and through individual mediators (whether prophets, judges or kings) instead of being in an intimate relationship with God that would cause their faces to shine like that of Moses.

The Bible can then be seen as the record of a conversation between God and a human race which has, as a whole, rejected this conversation but which, in a remnant (mainly Israel and the Church), continues to oscillate between dialogue and independent rejection. This is, finally, why the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is so decisive. Jesus lives fully in this conversation with God and he enables us to enter the conversation too. When we do so, like Moses, our faces also shine with the light of God (2 Corinthians 3. 7 – 18).

Great God, you said, ‘Let there be light,’ and light came into being. Your light is most clearly seen in Jesus, who is the light of the world. Enable each one of us, with unveiled faces, to see his glory as though reflected in a mirror, and be transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. Amen.
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Gungor - Let There Be.