Church Times - Art review: Monadic Singularity by Anish Kapoor (Liverpool Cathedral)

My latest review for Church Times is on Monadic Singularity by Anish Kapoor at Liverpool Cathedral:

'We see from a range of perspectives to look beyond, whether into the depths or up to the heavens, and, therefore, are asked by the artist to experience what the architect asked us to experience in first visualising and then creating this building. That experience is ultimately why this exhibition is so apposite as a celebration of this cathedral’s anniversary. Scott used 20th-century materials and techniques to create pointed arches that lead our eyes heavenwards, generating awe through light, space, and height. Whether directing us to the depths or heights, Kapoor mirrors Scott’s intent in his choices of works for this sacred space.'

Other of my pieces for Church Times can be found here. My writing for ArtWay can be found here. My pieces for Artlyst are here, those for Seen & Unseen are here, and those for Art+Christianity are here.

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Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Joy.

Liverpool Cathedral

I visited Liverpool Cathedral today to see Monadic Singularity by Anish Kapoor. Liverpool Cathedral is the largest cathedral in Britain and the 5th largest Cathedral in the world. It is filled with amazing artwork including statues, paintings and sculptures. It also hosts many installations such as Monadic Singularity.

Churches and Cathedrals have provided inspiration to some of the Western world’s greatest music and visual art. At times of widespread illiteracy, visual art in churches was a powerful means of both communication and control. At Liverpool Cathedral there is art for everyone to enjoy, whether that be a traditional painting, a classic stained glass window or the instagramable neon sign under the West Window. In keeping with the vastness of the building, Liverpool Cathedral has good examples of larger works by five Royal Academicians: Craigie Aitchison; Tracey Emin; Elisabeth Frink; Christopher Le Brun; and Adrian Wiszniewski, alongside works by a number of other contemporary artists.

While making your way around the Cathedral you will encounter:

• The Welcoming Christ Sculpture by Elizabeth Frink: This is the first piece of art you will see when coming into the Cathedral. On Easter Day 1993, Elizabeth Frink’s The Welcoming Christ was unveiled at Liverpool Cathedral. The artist died a few days later, but the sculpture was enough to establish her as one of the foremost religious sculptors of the century.
• ‘For You’ Light Installation by Tracey Emin: Located at the West Window, the purpose of this neon art installation is to encourage the viewer to think about love and the need to share love. It is specifically placed over the main doors of the Cathedral for people to spend time in contemplation as they enter or before they leave the building.The work was commissioned by the Chapter of Liverpool Cathedral as a principal contribution to Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture 2008.
• Painting of Crucifixion by Gary Bunt: Bert, his dog, our God – An artist’s impression of the New Testament. Gary paints in ‘the shed’ (his studio) which is nestled in his garden which he has designed and landscaped so the village church spire can be seen from his easel. 
• Icon of the Trinity Painting by Cristi Paslaru: As you enter The Baptistry you will notice this piece. This icon is a copy, by the contemporary Romanian iconographer Cristi Paslaru, of the original 15th century piece deemed to be by the Russian painter Andrei Rublev, whose original work hangs in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.
• The Outraged Christ by Charles Lutyens: Entering the Derby Transept you will see the ‘Outraged Christ’ sculpture. It is a 15ft high depiction in wood, iron, and steel of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Made of hard and soft wood, drilled, dowelled and bound together with powerful construction adhesive, it was shaped primarily with a large chisel and chainsaw by Charles Lutyens. Charles decided to become an artist while at Bryanston School in Dorset. He studied oil painting and sculpture at the Chelsea, Slade, St Martin’s and Central Schools of Art in London, and later in 1957 with Andre Lhote in Paris. This sculpture was started some 40 years ago, while sitting outside College – Over a period of days he sculpted the head of Christ. You can find out more about Charles Lutyens here.
• LJMU Cross sculpture by J. R. M. Robertson: This Cross was presented to Liverpool Cathedral by Liverpool Polytechnic on the Tenth Anniversary of the Polytechnic in 1980. The sculpture was designed and constructed by J. R. M. Robertson of the Fine Art Department. 
• The Good Samaritan by Adrian Wisznieski: Located in the South Choir Aisle, The Good Samaritan was Commissioned in 1995 and given to the Cathedral in March 1996. Funded by the Jerusalem Trust, £94000 for 2 paintings and £11750 framing. 
• Kneeling Madonna by Giovanni De La Robbia: Donated by Francis Neilson a 15th century statue in wood of the Kneeling Madonna by Giovanni Della Robbia is complemented by a figure of the Baby Christ Child in The Lady Chapel. 
• The Baby Christ Child by Don MacKinlay: In 2002, the Cathedral Chapter commissioned the Rossendale artist, Don McKinlay, to create a Christ-child to be set alongside the Madonna. The commission was given in memory of Dean Derrick Walters who died in 2000.
• Josephine Butler Windows: The Josephine Butler Trust commissioned the work to restore the Noble Women windows within the Lady Chapel. The nineteenth century social reformer and campaigner for women’s rights is one of the 12 women featured in the windows. The trust works to keep her vision alive and annually celebrates current social reformers.
• At the End…A Beginning by Richard Harrison: The artist Richard Harrison, whose triptych ‘Crucifixion: At the End… A Beginning’ hangs in the Cathedral Ambulatory, it was accepted to exhibit at the John Moores 2010 Exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery. 
• Risen Christ Maquette by Elizabeth Frink: This Marquette is located in the Ambulatory… Dame Elisabeth Frink was an English sculptor and printmaker born in Suffolk November 1930. She studied at the Guilford School of Art and at the Chelsea School of Art. She became a part of a post-war group of British sculptors. 
• Calvary by John Ronald Craigie Aitchison CBE RSA RA: This painting is located in The Chapter House- it was Commissioned by the Dean and Chapter of Liverpool Cathedral and was dedicated on 8th July 1998 at Evensong. The artist has a deep feeling for the crucifixion. He captures the desolation, the horror, and the pain; but at the same time, he manages in his frugal style, to signal the crucifixion as the gateway to hope and resurrection. 
• The Holy Family by Josefina Vasconcellos: Josefina de Vasconcellos was an internationally renowned sculptor who was born in Molesey in Surrey in 1904. Vasconcellos was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1985 for her community work for disadvantaged and disabled children. This sculpture is located in The Children’s Chapel. 
• Painting of Liverpool Cathedral by Hannah Thompson: This beautiful painting of the Cathedral and its surroundings is located in The Children’s Chapel. 
• Our Lady of Walsingham by Unknown: This impressive sculpture is located in the North Choir Aisle. 
• House Built Upon Rock by Adrian Wiszniewski: Located in the North Choir Aisle, this painting was Commissioned in 1995 and given to the Cathedral in March 1996. Funded by the Jerusalem Trust, £94000 for 2 paintings and £11750 framing. An allegory of The House Built Upon Rock will show a family at the seaside with a serpentine sand snake, sandcastles, buckets and spades. The painting is using the parable as a premonition of Christ’s crucifixion. 
• Cross Icon painting by Ludmila Pawlowska: She is a Kazakh Post-war and contemporary artist who was born in 1964. Numerous Art Galleries and museums have featured Ludmila’s work. This piece is located in The Chapel of The Holy Spirit. 
• The Redemption by Arthur Dooley and Anne McTavish: On the 12th March 1997, The Fabric advisory committee approved the application to display a sculpture and tapestry “The Redemption” by Sculptor Arthur Dooley and Embroiderer Ann McTavish in the chapel of the Holy Spirit.
• Christi Paslaru pieces in Chapel of The Holy Spirit: Large Icons Painting – The Icons were painted on boards that have been cut to size and sculpted in a Monastery. They are made of lime wood with oak struts on the back which prevent warping. The wood is prepared in the traditional manner with a canvas and several layers of gesso (plaster). The style of painting is known as Tempera on Wood.
• Memorial Bust Noel Chavasse by Terry Mc Donald: Located in The Memorial Chapel this sculpture is made by Terry Mcdonald. His apprenticeship began when he was still a teenager at the Bluecoat Studios, he was there for 10 years. In Liverpool Cathedral he worked on some of the intricate finials of the huge columns after they were damaged in a storm. 
• The Prodigal Son by Christopher Le Brun: Located on the left side of the Presbytery, this painting was made in 1996. The phrase from the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) which inspired the artist was ‘He saw him while he was still far off…’. The road winds towards us from the distant land through which the son had travelled. As he approaches, head down, arms at his side, he is greeted by the dog that jumps up in recognition. 
• The Good Samaritan by Christopher Le Brun: Also located in the Presbytery the painting was funded by the Jerusalem Trust £152750 for the 2 paintings The Prodigal Son and The Good Samaritan, £17625 for framing. In 2009 Le Brun was commissioned by the Royal Mint to design a new fifty pence piece commemorating the 250th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London.
• ‘Praise’ by Peter Vaillant: The painting is located at the shop stairs. Peter Vaillant is a recognised and acclaimed British abstract artist, obtaining notoriety, through international exhibitions. Reviewed as having an intrepid, powerful, and vibrant modernism, distinguishable to his peers.

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George Harrison - Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth).

Olympic Park tour

The Barking Area Regeneration Group toured the Olympic Park this afternoon to see and hear at first hand the Olympic Legacy plans.

The Olympic Park Legacy Company's aim is that the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park will be at the centre of London’s growth this century, and a vibrant focal point for events, sport and leisure. Its connections, sporting facilities, parkland, waterways and family housing will form a unique mix – building on the best of London’s traditions to create a ‘21st Century garden city’ and liking into surrounding neighbourhoods to promote convergence, regeneration and prosperity in east London.

The Park site will be developed into two distinct areas: a vibrant, urban south plaza akin to London's South Bank and a green, scenic north park. The south plaza, adjacent to Westfield Stratford City, will be a crossroads for sport, culture and quality design with a rolling programme of events starting from 2013. Home to the Olympic Stadium and the iconic Aquatics Centre, the plaza will also feature the 115m tall ArcelorMittal Orbit designed by Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond - a unique, global attraction and the UK's tallest sculpture.

The north of the Park will include extensive revitalised waterways and landscaped parklands with an emphasis on sport and leisure. Visitors will enjoy cycle paths, play areas and use of the Velodrome and neighbouring Eton Manor sports complex, both of which will be owned and managed by Lee Valley Regional Park Authority after the 2012 Games.

In addition, a new campus-style business district will be developed in the north-west of the Park. Focused on creative and innovative industries, the area will offer affordable and flexible office space to encourage the successful businesses already based in East London to grow. The stated need from local residents is for real jobs and opportunities to build careers across a range of business sectors. The Park and its key employment hubs will aim to address this need by creating 8-10,000 jobs located in these modern workspaces within an inviting parkland setting.

The neighbourhoods of the Park will provide residents with a range of homes in a location that it is hoped will become one of London’s most celebrated places over the next ten years. These neighbourhoods will include vital community facilities such as schools, shops, places to relax, play and exercise as well as faith, health and community centres.

As the gateway to the Olympic Park, Westfield Stratford City is part of one of the largest urban regeneration projects ever undertaken in the UK. Stratford City and the Olympic Park together form a 700-acre development. Seventy per cent of spectators will pass through Westfield Stratford City en route to the Olympic Park Games venues, and Visit London has forecast that the London 2012 Games will contribute an additional £1.3 - 2.2 billion to London tourism over the period 2007-2017.

InSpiration will be the faith zone in the biggest urban shopping centre in Europe, Westfield Stratford City. Designed as a worship and prayer area and also as a quiet space, InSpiration is a facility which will be used by people of all faiths and none. Located on the 3rd floor near the Food Court, it will have an open area used for collective activities and a smaller area with armchairs and tables for private prayer, quiet time, one-on-one conversations and small groups. There is currently an opportunity for people to staff the facility in a variety of time slots. InSpiration will be open 11am to 7pm Mondays to Saturdays, and 11am to 5pm on Sundays.

The 2012 Games provides a unique opportunity for UK churches to be seen for what they really are.
By playing their part in the programmes of outreach, hospitality and service every church can help tell a different story. And waken fresh interest in who it is who makes us different and how they can know him for themselves. More Than Gold exists to enable the UK churches to engage with the 2012 Games.

As churches and communities nationwide are preparing to put on special events to celebrate the Games, a prayer composed by Reverend Christopher Woods has been issued by the Church of England:

A prayer in preparation for the 2012 Games

Eternal God,
Giver of joy and source of all strength,
we pray for those
who prepare for the London Olympic and Paralympic games.
For the competitors training for the Games and their loved ones,
For the many thousands who will support them, For the Churches and others who are organising special events and who will welcome many people from many nations.
In a world where many are rejected and abused,
we pray for a spirit of tolerance and acceptance, of humility and respect
and for the health and safety of all.
May we at the last be led towards the love of Christ who is more than gold, today and forever. Amen

Perhaps, in light of the above, a prayer is also needed for the Olympic Legacy:

Our Father, in praying your kingdom come on earth as in heaven,
we pray for the hopes and dreams
invested in the Olympic Legacy to be realised.
For the formation of uniquely mixed neighbourhoods,
the attraction of innovative industries creating employment,
spaces to relax, play, exercise, pray and serve,
affordable family housing combined with vital community facilities.
May we build on the best traditions
of convergence, regeneration
and sustainability in east London
to seek to create a garden city
which is a crossroads for sport, culture and design
and come to see in our human striving to achieve this vision
a sign of your kingdom coming. Amen.

Click here for my earlier visit to the Olympic Park site.

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Bjork - Oceania.

CARAVAN Festival of the Arts

Following on from the success of the interfaith CARAVAN Festival of the Arts held at the historic St. John’s Church in Maadi/Cairo over the last two years, a new and broader artistic CARAVAN Festival of the Arts 2011 with the theme of “My Neighbor” will open on February 3, 2011. The goal of the CARAVAN Festival of the Arts in February 2011 is to build bridges between East and West, Muslim and Christian, through the visual arts, literature, film and music. The initiative over the last two years has generated significant attention from the international media and art world, surpassing all expectations.

The CARAVAN Festival of the Arts comes out of a vision that the Arts can be one of the most effective mediums to enhance understanding and deepen respect between the Middle East and the West. Therefore the objective of this CARAVAN arts initiative is to use the Arts as a bridge for intercultural (East/West) and inter-religious (Muslim/Christian) interchange. Through this exhibition the goal is to highlight how the Arts can serve to encourage friendship and facilitate sharing between the Arab world and the West.

Opening on February 3, 2011, at 7 PM, the exhibition and festival will be officially opened by the Grand Imam of Al Azhar in Cairo, Sheikh Ahmed el Tayeb. 45 premier Middle Eastern and Western visual artists will come together for the selling exhibition which will be held inside the church, with each submitting one piece of work that reflects the theme, “My Neighbor”. As the previous years have shown, it will be an exhibition that has a diverse range of artists ranging from one of Egypt’s leading contemporary artists, Mohamed Abla, to rising star Reda Abdel Rahman, to expatriate artists Britt Boutros Ghali and Roland Prime to name but a few. Many thousands are expected to attend and there will be considerable Arab and Western media coverage.

Special participating guests to this year’s CARAVAN Festival of the Arts are Reza Aslan, the New York Times bestselling Iranian-American author (No god but God, Beyond Fundamentalism, Tablet & Pen), Khalid Abdalla, British-Egyptian film actor (star of The Kite Runner, United 93, and Green Zone with Matt Damon), and Mohammed Antar, world renowned Ney (Middle Eastern Flute) player.

“Our experience has shown,” says Rev. Canon Paul-Gordon Chandler, author and the American rector/minister of St. John’s Church and founder of the Caravan Festival of the Arts, “that art is a universal language that has the ability to dissolve the petty differences that divide us. The words of Anish Kapoor, the contemporary Indian sculptor illustrate our objective; ‘We live in a fractured world. I've always seen it as my role as an artist to attempt to make wholeness.’”

In looking toward this upcoming February 2011 event, “Our desire through this third exhibition,” says Roland Prime, exhibition curator and a participating British artist, “is that we will see how much we all have in common and how we can enhance and deepen each other’s lives.”

All attendance is free of charge, but 20% of all art sales go to Middle Eastern charities assisting the poor.

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Taram - Mustafa / Moj Dragane.

Turning the world upside down

 
Anish Kapoor's stainless steel sculptures in Kensington Gardens bring the sky down to earth and turn the world upside down. Constructed from highly reflective stainless steel, the giant curved mirror surfaces create illusory distortions of the surroundings and are visible across large distances, creating new vistas in this famous and much-loved setting.

The sculptures are sited to contrast and reflect the changing colours, foliage and weather in Kensington Gardens. Despite their monumental scale, the works appear as pure reflection of their surroundings: the sky, trees, water, wildlife and changing seasons. The distortions in the works’ mirror-like surfaces call into question the viewers’ relationship to both the work itself and the surrounding environment.

Mauro Perucchetti’s work at the Halcyon Gallery unites pop aesthetics with social comment. Perucchetti presents a critique of our society by holding up a mirror to our material desires through his use of materials, including coloured polyurethane resin, gold leaf, Swarovski crystals, and marble, which reflect our obsession with shiny, shallow surfaces. His bejewelled sculptures confidently satirise the work of Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst while challenging consumerism and greed.
 
Perucchetti's Jelly Baby Family sculpture will soon be installed at Marble Arch as part of the City of Sculpture Festival. This sculpture is part of a body of work inspired by the dilemma between cloning and religious or medical ethics. Perucchetti uses the jelly baby as an impersonation of cloned beings; the ambiguity of their sinister sweetness.
 
Close by the Halcyon is the Scream Gallery which also currently has a pop art influenced exhibition by Thai artist Pakpoom Silaphan. Silaphan paints Western celebrity icons such as John Lennon, Che Guevara, Andy Warhol and Muhammad Ali in white emulsion on old Coca-Cola, Pepsi or Fanta advertising signs found in Bangkok. As a Buddhist who had a Catholic education, he is interested in the power of advertising and popular culture seeing fashion as today’s opium of the masses and, like religion, as constantly shifting and re-inventing itself.

He says of his work: "The influence of living in a different culture inspires much of my work. I think multicultural societies are as complex as an unfit jigsaw, but offer many opportunities creatively. I like to work with themes from everyday life and popular culture, both for my subject matter and my media as well - newspaper cuttings feature in much of my work in 2D and 3D. I choose subjects by using my basic understanding of similarities between cultural issues and situations in everyday life, which I cannot define as right or wrong but as a conclusion. In terms of the selection of my work, I like to pick and combine subjects that have an inherent ambiguity and which have triviality and feeling in equal measure."

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Thea Gilmore - Saviours And All.