Upcoming arts events

Details of arts-related events that may be of interest:

Compassionate Art: talk by Nick Garrard in aid of Hospice Ethiopia UK January 18th, 7.30pm

An introduction to the concept of compassionate art through some famous and lesser- known examples, in which artists provide inspiration, protest, reflection or transformation, expressing grief or offering hope.

To register for your Zoom invite, please phone 01508 538014 or send an e-mail via https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/7440/get-in-touch/. Admission is free but donations warmly welcomed to a locally-based charity supporting Ethiopia’s only hospice via its website www.hospiceethiopia.org.uk.


Faith, Gospel and the Blues: An American Story

As America enters another turbulent period, Bloomsbury Central Baptist church welcomes two guests from the United States to discuss faith, gospel and the blues. They will be hosting two online meetings in January 2021, in which they will consider how songs which have their roots in an era of slavery and oppression can speak to today’s situation.

On Wednesday 13th January at 7.30pm, they will be joined by Rev. Travis Adams, Director of Youth Ministries from Flossmoor Community Church on the outskirts of Chicago. Music plays an important part in his ministry with a diverse, multiracial congregation. He was previously a member of the ministry team at Bloomsbury.

On January 27th at 7.30pm, the special guest to discuss blues music is Dr. Dina M. Bennett, the Curatorial Director for the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville. She will trace the links between blues and gospel.

The sessions will feature videos of well known songs, to which you are invited to listen with fresh ears. Both events will be moderated by Duncan Bartlett, a Deacon at Bloomsbury Baptist Church and a former presenter on the BBC World Service.

To join these sessions, please contact Bloomsbury's Minister Simon Woodman (simon@bloomsbury.org.uk) for the Zoom link.

You can watch again the previous sessions in this series:

• Stand By Me - with Naveen Arles of the London International Gospel Choir - https://youtu.be/Vr-lLoWtRlY.
• Hold On - with Udoka, a member of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church - https://youtu.be/BT5pieSV5Ss.
• Mary Don't You Weep - with The Revd Stephen Hance - https://youtu.be/yx6BTBWu4UA.

Art and social impact: 

Tuesday 26 January, 14:30 GMT. Register for a zoom invite at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/art-and-social-impact-tickets-134763030853.

A conversation with artists whose work has a social impact dimension in order to explore the question of art and social change.

Includes discussion of personal journeys in addressing issues of social concern, approaches used, and expectations in terms of impact. The session will also explore ways in which churches can engage with such art and use it for exploring issues with congregations and beyond.

Jonathan Evens will be in conversation with André Daughtry (http://www.andredaughtrystudio.com/), Micah Purnell (https://micahpurnell.com/), Nicola Ravenscroft (https://nicolaravenscroft.com/) and Hannah Rose Thomas (http://hannahrosethomas.com/).


Lifted: art, faith and mental wellbeing

Art, faith and mental wellbeing are explored through the lives and creative output of:

• Unity Spencer, painter and teacher, Quaker, author of 'Lucky to be an artist' (published 2015)'
• Eularia Clarke, two of whose works feature in the Methodist Modern Art Collection;
• David Jones, First World War soldier, Roman Catholic artist, poet and calligrapher; and, quite remarkably,
• Vincent Van Gogh, who preached in Methodist churches when he lived in London in the 1870s.

James Smetham provides the focal point. A friend of the artists Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Ruskin, Smetham was Drawing Master at the Wesleyan Westminster College and a devout Methodist Class Leader. His prolific visual ‘squarings’ (postage-stamp-size pen and ink drawings) annotate his personal bible and hymn book, recording his daily activity both in celebration of and search for God’s blessings. He also produced literary ‘ventilators’, which might be described today as a method of therapeutic journalling.

Bible study will be accompanied by the opportunity to create personal ‘squarings’ or other responses to these artists who struggled variously with their mental health.

Weekly for six weeks, starting 22 February 2021. The course will require approximately four hours study a week. Cost £175. Course booking: https://smetham.eventbrite.co.uk.

The Wesley House Cambridge online booking link is at https://www.wesley.cam.ac.uk/study/onlinelearning/lifted/ with the closing date for registration being 15 February.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Andra Day - Amen.

United Guilds Service and the Clothworkers' Company

The 74th Service of the United Guilds of the City of London saw representatives of the Livery Companies pack St Paul's Cathedral today.

The first United Guilds Service was held on Lady Day, 25 March 1943, the first day of the year by the old calendar. One reason given for its institution was to remember the religious origins of the Guilds but essentially it arose out of the desire of the Companies to unite and help to solve the problems facing the blitz-damaged City.

At the meeting of the Masters and Clerks of the Twelve Great Companies 1st February 1943 it was resolved to hold the service and to send a petition to the King that he attend. The Masters and Prime Wardens were to attend in their robes with such of their livery as ‘may be able’.

In the event the King did not attend, but the Lord Mayor and the Aldermen did so. Dr. Fisher, the Bishop of London, gave the address. The Lord Mayor gave an austerity luncheon after the service to the Masters and Prime Wardens.

In his speech the Lord Mayor hoped that the service would be held annually for it gave an opportunity for the Livery to ‘approach God with one voice of united prayer’. The Master of the Mercers, Lt. Col. E. Clementi Smith, replied and emphasised the problems facing the Companies at that date and how they could be relied upon to do everything possible to rebuild the City.

The United Guilds Service now takes place each year, filling St Paul’s Cathedral to capacity. Members of all companies join with the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, with great ceremony and beautiful music, and an address by a leading churchman which this year was the Bishop of London.

Following the service I was invited to lunch with the Clothworkers' Company. Founded by Royal Charter in 1528, the original purpose of The Clothworkers’ Company was to protect its members and promote the craft of cloth-finishing within the City of London.

Although few of their present members are involved in the textile industry in any direct way, they continue to support textiles, principally through educational grants, fostering the development of technical textiles and colour science, and support for the nation's textile heritage.

The assets of the Company, which are based on property and investments, are used to support The Clothworkers' Foundation, which is a registered charity and one of the largest grant-makers in Britain.

One of the Company’s newest collections is of bookbindings. Design bookbindings represent the highest level of workmanship and technical expertise combined with the best of modern innovative design.

The Company has recently begun commissioning such bindings in order to lend vital support to the endangered craft of bookbinding. These include bindings by Bernard Middleton M.B.E. and Jeff Clements M.B.E. amongst other notable craftsmen and women in their nascent collection.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Maurice Durufle - Ubi Caritas Et Amor.

Beyond Airbrushed from Art History: Theology and Modern Irish Art

In Theology and Modern Irish Art Gesa E. Thiessen explores central issues in the dialogue between theology and art, paying special attention to the spiritual aspects of a number of modern Irish painters. Those artists whose work she discusses are:

Mainie Jellett: 'In her search for truth and vision as a painter, Mainie Jellett became a seminal figure and leader of the Irish modernist movement ... Jellett’s work was based on biblical themes, as she herself was a religious and spiritual person. She was influenced by the work of the early Renaissance artist Fra Angelico, celebrated for his beautiful frescos, which gave an emotive and serene quality to religious themes. Jellett’s ‘compositions’, as many of her religious paintings were entitled, contain figurative elements, often presented in ambiguous, non-representational, symbolic ways, such as Abstract Composition (c.1935), housed in the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork.'

Jack B. Yeats: 'There can be little doubt that the dominant figure in Irish painting of the twentieth century is Jack B. Yeats (1869-1957). The son of an outstanding painter and the brother of Ireland’s pre-eminent poet, he would have had every excuse if he had felt overwhelmed by their combined gifts and as a result had failed to realise his full potential as an artist. And in fact Jack Yeats was a very modest, man, private and unassuming where his poet-brother was very much a public figure His rise as a painter was slow and though his early work has plenty of vitality, his great period as a colourist did not begin until the late 1920s, when he was already middle-aged. His work is a unique fusion of realism and imagination, of the everyday and the visionary, and his nervous brushstrokes and broken, irridescent colour were far in advance of their time particularly in relatively provincial Ireland.'

Louis le Brocquy: 'Contrary to a generally held view, I think that painting is not in any direct sense a means of communication or a means of self-expression. When you are painting you are trying to discover, to uncover, to reveal. I sometimes think of the activity of painting as a kind of archaeology - an archaeology of the spirit.' 

'Like the Celts I tend to regard the head as this magic box containing the spirit. Enter that box, enter behind the billowing curtain of the face, and you have the whole landscape of the spirit.'

Gerard Dillon: Gerard Dillon and Mainie Jellett 'shared an interest in Irish legend and Celtic iconography.  Dillon had visited the Boyne Valley and explored the monastic ruins at Mellifont and Monasterboice.  He was much taken by the Irish high crosses and subsequently these would appear regularly in his work.'

'The artist held his first solo show in 1942 in the country shop, Dublin. Opened by Mainie Jellett, other works from this period are characteristically naïve and contain a Christian theme; Forgive us Our Trespasses, An Aran Funeral, and Dust to Dust. The images are depicted with humour in a simple and child like manner with disproportionate perspective to enhance symbolism often evoking a message.'

Colin Middleton: 'At times these paintings achieve an intense and almost visionary sense of union with the landscape, evoking its power, its rhythmic energy and its colors.'

Mary Magdalene and the Holy Trinity 'is one of the few of this time to make a religious reference in its title or subject. The titles of many post-war paintings used Biblical quotations which matched the emotional pitch of those works, but the works in this first exhibition are more ambiguous and witty in their expression of ideas.'

Patrick Collins: 'Patrick Collins’ landscapes are primarily influenced by his childhood memories of the rural surroundings in Co. Sligo. He approaches the landscape in a philosophical, ethereal way. He is not just depicting the land – he is also searching to capture the emotive memory and experience of a place. The landscapes go beyond the literal to present a dreamlike vision, an illusive quality, recalling how Collins felt as a child inhabiting the landscape. ‘In Collins’s work there is [a] constant and ambiguous shift between what is seen and what is known, what is present and what is absent, what is felt and what is remembered.’ ...

During the 1950s, Collins’ paintings focused on religious themes, affording him the opportunity to bring figurative elements into his work. He embarked on a journey from Dublin to Donegal to study the depictions of the stations of the cross in various parish churches. The paintings are simplistic and childlike in their treatment of the figure, telling the story of the crucifixion of Christ. Once again, Collins focuses on the emotive element of the story through compositional devices, isolated figures, sparse backgrounds and limited colour to create an atmosphere and mood. One of his paintings, entitled Crucifixion (After a Child’s Drawing) (1964), was a direct response to viewing his daughter Penelope’s drawing of the scene, capturing a child’s feelings and interpretation of the story.'

Tony O'Malley: 'O’Malley treated religion with respect, but was drawn more to a simple spirituality. He inherited some of his father’s West of Ireland pre-Christian ideas. In Callan, he loved the mystic Abbey well which was deemed to have curative properties.

“I’m a Pantheist at heart”, he said proudly. From an early age, he wanted to get behind the seeming reality of things to probe hidden meanings. When asked about his conception of God some years ago, he replied: “God is that ash tree outside, the birds singing, and also the magpie competing with other birds for a grub in the clay”. He felt it was important to be at one with nature. “Children have this sense of wonder before the school system kills it”, he opined.
This communion with nature and the spiritual dimension to his life informed much of his painting.'

Patrick Scott: 'Patrick Scott developed a type of Minimalism, using unprimed canvas together with tempera and gold leaf, in restrained, mathematically organised, modular arrangements, with a contemplative spiritual quality. He drew back from the machine ethic of the American artists who had pioneered Minimalism during the 1950s, preferring the handcrafted element of the application of gold leaf.'  

Patrick Graham: 'Art historian, writer and curator Peter Selz ... says that Graham “confronts the viewer with drawings and paintings of shattering force … [he] makes us aware that great painting has a presence and a future.” Art historian John Handley notes that Graham’s work “addresses the timelessness of time, the repetition of history, and the continuous cyclical nature of silence, abandonment, and redemption in the creative process.” In the artist’s own words, “The silence becomes the painting, the painting comes from silence. It is the moment when painting is no longer an act of doing or making but of receiving.” ...

Graham’s inspiration is deeply rooted in the Irish landscape, in vistas and places that hold deep meaning for him. The Irish affinity for nature, combined with profound experiences of both oppression and repression, has led to extraordinary artistic expressions in poetry, music, and dance. This cultural and artistic milieu formed Graham’s visual expression. His work incorporates ambiguous symbolic forms and scripted phrases that resonate like fragments of traditional song and lyrical poetry which spring from a unique historical consciousness; through them he explores the elemental processes of life and the existential journey. Among the realities he acknowledges in a sensitive voice is the Irish religious experience, particularly of the Catholic faith, yet his work has universal appeal to those who struggle with issues of identity, freedom, or faith.'

Patrick Hall: 'The sense of religion is very strong in me, it's indefinable ambiguities, the timeless infinitude of space. My father's family was Protestant and my mother's family was Catholic so that helped. That also puts me slightly on the edge of society, or maybe I have chosen to be on the edge, but that is one part of my history that removes me from the centre, edges feed me. Gradually as I got older these things became very meaningful for me and have remained very meaningful for me. They were doors to transcendence, to stepping outside of myself, towards otherness. Religion I suppose is a kind of window to the sky. I did an exhibition of paintings of clouds and the cloud represents a kind of unknowing. There's a thing called the cloud of unknowing, so religion is about not knowing. Religion is really a bad word, inaccurate. Otherness matters more than anything.'

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Energy Orchard - King Of Love.

The art of conversation

I have on more than one occasion recently (see here and here) argued that inter-faith dialogue provides an opportunity for the development of a broader understanding of interaction with those who are different from my or ourselves; that it can both provide a basis for a new approach to morality and give an insight into the nature of the Trinity.

The necessity for such understandings have been reinforced for me by the reaction to decisions made recently by the deputies and bishops of The Episcopal Church and the posts regarding CMS and Greenbelt. What passes for debate on such issues is often anything but, primarily because there is no real desire to understand, respect or value the other. So, in the CMS/Greenbelt furore, for example, those who understand themselves to be abused by their opponents as "bigoted, blinkered, homophobic, narrow-minded" etc. respond in the exactly the same vein by posting about gay bishop poster boys with a "sadly amaturish biblical hermeneutic" and equating gay christian organisations with the BNP.

Such positions are taken and abuse meted out because people have already made up their minds on these issues before hearing any argument from their opponents and, therefore, they believe that they have nothing to learn from their opponents. This is the reverse of what has to occur when real and meaningful inter-faith dialogue takes place, as can be seen, for example, in the ten ethical guidelines drawn up by the Christian Muslim Forum which set out how Christians and Muslims can talk about their faith to each other in a way that is just, truthful and compassionate:
1) We bear witness to, and proclaim our faith not only through words but through our
attitudes, actions and lifestyles.
2) We cannot convert people, only God can do that. In our language and methods we
should recognise that people’s choice of faith is primarily a matter between themselves and
God.
3) Sharing our faith should never be coercive; this is especially important when working with
children, young people and vulnerable adults. Everyone should have the choice to accept or
reject the message we proclaim and we will accept people’s choices without resentment.
4) Whilst we might care for people in need or who are facing personal crises, we should
never manipulate these situations in order to gain a convert.
5) An invitation to convert should never be linked with financial, material or other
inducements. It should be a decision of the heart and mind alone.
6) We will speak of our faith without demeaning or ridiculing the faiths of others.
7) We will speak clearly and honestly about our faith, even when that is uncomfortable or
controversial.
8) We will be honest about our motivations for activities and we will inform people when
events will include the sharing of faith.
9) Whilst recognising that either community will naturally rejoice with and support those who
have chosen to join them, we will be sensitive to the loss that others may feel.
10) Whilst we may feel hurt when someone we know and love chooses to leave our faith, we
will respect their decision and will not force them to stay or harass them afterwards.

These are guidelines which those on both sides of the current debates in the Anglican Communion would do well to study and apply. If we could begin to debate controversial issues from a similar starting point, our debates could be much more productive.

Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, writes in The Dignity of Difference:

“We must learn the art of conversation, from which truth emerges not, as in Socratic dialogues, by the refutation of falsehood but by the quite different process of letting our world be enlarged by the presence of others who think, act, and interpret reality in ways radically different from our own.”

When we do this, when we “recognize God’s image in someone who is not in my image, whose language, faith, ideals, are different from mine” then we are allowing God to remake us in his image instead of making God in our own image. And to do so has moral outworkings, as Sacks notes when he writes:

“I believe that we are being summoned by God to see in the human other a trace of the divine Other. The test – so lamentably failed by the great powers of the twentieth century – is to see the divine presence in the face of a stranger; to heed the cry of those who are disempowered in this age of unprecedented powers; who are hungry and poor and ignorant and uneducated, whose human potential is being denied the chance to be expressed. That is the faith of Abraham and Sarah, from whom the great faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, trace their spiritual or actual ancestry. That is the faith of one who, though he called himself but dust and ashes, asked of God himself, ‘Shall the judge of all the earth not do justice?’ We are not gods, but are summoned by God – to do His work of love and justice and compassion and peace.”

Richard Middleton and Brian Walsh make similar points when they write that:

“in this covenantal worldview, all of creation is subjective, all of creation speaks. The task of human knowing, in all of its forms, is to translate that creational glossolalia into human terms … An epistomology intent on listening to our covenantal partners (God and the rest of creation) will decidely not silence the voice of the other … In response to the gift of creation, we are called as stewards to a knowing that opens up the creation in all of its integrity and enhances its disclosure. Rather than engaging the real world as masters, we are invited to be image-bearing rulers. Our knowing does not create or integrate reality. Rather we respond to a created and integrated reality in a way that either honors and promotes that integration or dishonors it. We are called to reciprocate the Creator’s love in our epistomological stewardship of this gift. Wright describes such an epistomology of love beautifully when he says, “The lover affirms the reality and the otherness of the beloved. Love does not seek to collapse the beloved in terms of itself.” In a relational and stewardly epistemology, “ ‘love’ will mean ‘attention’: the readiness to let the other be the other, the willingness to grow and change in relation to the other.””

Like Middleton and Walsh, I have also written (in Living with other faiths) that there is a biblical, theological and philosophical grounding for such dialogue in the Christian tradition. I believe that this grounding begins with the exchange that is at the heart of the Trinity, takes in both the conversations between human beings and God which repeatedly occur in scripture and the dialogical form of scripture itself, and accepts the philosophical perception that human identity is constructed through conversation.

Drawing on the philosophical thought of Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas, Rowan Williams has written that, “all human identity is constructed through conversations, in one way or another.” First, we have to become aware of someone other than ourselves. Jonathan Sacks says, “we must learn to listen and be prepared to be surprised by others … make ourselves open to their stories, which may profoundly conflict with ours … we must learn the art of conversation, from which truth emerges … by the … process of letting our world be enlarged by the presence of others who think, act, and interpret reality in ways radically different from our own.”

Second, by these conversations we become aware of ourselves. As people, we are not autonomous constructions. Instead, our individual identities are gifted to us by the people, events, stories and histories that we encounter as we go through life. If there was no one and nothing outside of ourselves we would have no reference points in life, no way of knowing what is unique and special about ourselves. In conversations we become aware of how we differ from others and therefore what is unique about ourselves.

Finally, in conversations we also become aware of what we have in common with others. Conversation is something that you can only do with someone else. Therefore, Charles Taylor has argued that, opening a conversation is to inaugurate a common action. A conversation is ‘our’ action, something we are both involved in together. In this way, conversation reminds us of those things that “we can only value or enjoy together” and is, as Rowan Williams has said, “an acknowledgement that someone else’s welfare is actually constitutive of my own.”

Recognising the significant changes which have led to religious plurality in our society, the General Synod as long ago as 1981 endorsed the Four Principles of Inter Faith Dialogue agreed ecumenically by the British Council of Churches:

• Dialogue begins when people meet each other
• Dialogue depends upon mutual understanding and mutual trust
• Dialogue makes it possible to share in service to the community
• Dialogue becomes the medium of authentic witness

Though simple and obvious when set out like this, as are the ten ethical guidelines from the Christian Muslim Forum, they nevertheless are easily and frequently ignored when debate and dialogue is supposedly occurring. These are then guidelines and principles for the art of conversation that we urgently need to re-learn in dealing with differences within the Anglican Communion, and inter-faith dialogue can show us the way.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Low Anthem - This God Damn House.