Between: religion

Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts

Monday, 2 September 2024

Artlyst - The Art Diary September 2024

My September Art Diary for Artlyst highlights a range of international exhibitions before returning to the UK for exhibitions at Hastings Contemporary, The Sainsbury Centre, The Fitzwilliam Museum and Elizabeth Xi Bauer. I also highlight two interesting art books, a new initiative by the Association of Art Historians and a charity auction jointly hosted by Bonhams and Hauser & Wirth:

'Also in Mallorca is Zupan & Zupan, an exhibition by father and daughter, Bruno and Natasha Zupan. Art critic Ed McCormick described Bruno Zupan’s work as such: “The real magic is in the paint surface itself, with its energetic bravura strokes, splashes, splatters, and drips forming a unified statement, as active, alive, and visually autonomous as an Abstract Expressionist work by de Kooning or Diebenkorn – yet simultaneously evoking the world outside the canvas … His rhapsodic brushwork and singular vision have garnered him a worldwide following among those who still seek beauty in the art of painting. Bruno Zupan is one of the last great romantics, and for that alone, his work is worth treasuring.” Zupan’s iconic technique using black filigree design over gold leaf was inspired by the Byzantine art of his homeland of Croatia. One of the ways in which he uses this style is to create images of churches that show the faithful moving towards love, “which is the basis of constructive religious belief”.'

See also my posts on Mallorcan visits, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. See my post on the upcoming exhibition by John Paul Barrett at St Andrew's Wickford, which is also mentioned in this month's Art Diary.

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Big Star - Try Again.

Tuesday, 23 July 2024

Seen and Unseen: The collective effervescence of sport’s congregation

My latest article for Seen & Unseen is entitled 'The collective effervescence of sport's congregation' and explores some of the ways in which sport and religion have been intimately entwined throughout history:

'[Dr. Mark] Doidge notes that “Regular congregation at a sacred space to perform collective rituals creates a ‘collective effervescence’ where the individuals become a community and identify themselves as such”. He also notes the similarities with sport which provides a “way of understanding who we are - who we socialise with, how we see other people, and the ways in which we interact with others” – and which is, like life, “about rivalries and competition, solidarity and teamwork, division, and unity”.

These similarities can lead some to privilege sport over religion but Doidge argues that sport “should recognise that religion is a key part of many people’s identity and sense of self, and work hard to be inclusive for all”.'

My first article for Seen and Unseen was 'Life is more important than art' which reviews the themes of recent art exhibitions that tackle life’s big questions and the roles creators take.

My second article 'Corinne Bailey Rae’s energised and anguished creative journey' explores inspirations in Detroit, Leeds and Ethiopia for Corinne Bailey Rae’s latest album, Black Rainbows, which is an atlas of capacious faith.

My third article was an interview with musician and priest Rev Simpkins in which we discussed how music is an expression of humanity and his faith.

My fourth article was a guide to the Christmas season’s art, past and present. Traditionally at this time of year “great art comes tumbling through your letterbox” so, in this article, I explore the historic and contemporary art of Christmas.

My fifth article was 'Finding the human amid the wreckage of migration'. In this article I interviewed Shezad Dawood about his multimedia Leviathan exhibition at Salisbury Cathedral where personal objects recovered from ocean depths tell a story of modern and ancient migrations.

My sixth article was 'The visionary artists finding heaven down here' in which I explored a tradition of visionary artists whose works shed light on the material and spiritual worlds.

My seventh article was 'How the incomer’s eye sees identity' in which I explain how curating an exhibition for Ben Uri Online gave me the chance to highlight synergies between ancient texts and current issues.

My eighth article was 'Infernal rebellion and the questions it asks' in which I interview the author Nicholas Papadopulos about his book The Infernal Word: Notes from a Rebel Angel.

My ninth article was 'A day, night and dawn with Nick Cave’s lyrics' in which I review Adam Steiner’s Darker With The Dawn — Nick Cave’s Songs Of Love And Death and explore whether Steiner's rappel into Cave’s art helps us understand its purpose.

My 10th article was 'Theresa Lola's poetical hope' about the death-haunted yet lyrical, joyful and moving poet for a new generation.

My 11th article was 'How to look at our world: Aaron Rosen interview', exploring themes from Rosen's book 'What Would Jesus See: Ways of Looking at a Disorienting World'.

My 12th article was 'Blake, imagination and the insight of God', exploring a new exhibition - 'William Blake's Universe at the Fitzwilliam Museum - which focuses on seekers of spiritual regeneration and national revival.

My 13th article 'Matthew Krishanu: painting childhood' was an interview with Matthew Krishanu on his exhibition 'The Bough Breaks' at Camden Art Centre.

My 14th article was entitled 'Art makes life worth living' and explored why society, and churches, need the Arts.

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New Order - World In Motion.

Sunday, 30 April 2023

Artlyst: Sean Scully - A Humility Towards Nature

My latest interview for Artlyst is with Sean Scully and includes mention of his current exhibition at Houghton Hall:

'Becoming more deeply connected to nature has only enhanced the sense of humility that is to be found in the title of his Houghton Hall exhibition – ‘Smaller Than The Sky’ – as “nature makes you humble and happy because you’re part of something bigger.” The key to a more paradisal relationship with nature is to remove the transactional or profit-based element, whether financial or salvific. The key, as with his friendship with Kelly Grovier and the writings of Donald Kuspit, is that we don’t act or create in order to get something back.'

See here for my article on Sean Scully's 'The 12 / Dark Windows'.

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

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To Kill A King - World Of Joy (A List Of Things To Do).

Friday, 17 February 2023

Art review: Zadie Xa: House Gods, Animal Guides and Five Ways 2 Forgiveness at the Whitechapel Gallery

My latest review for C hurch T imes is of Zadie Xa: House Gods, Animal Guides and Five Ways 2 Forgiveness at Whitechapel Gallery:

'Central to this installation is a vision of reconciliation, harmony, and unity across generations, between humanity and the natural world, and within the material and the spiritual. Though rooted in Korean heritage and religion, this is a vision that transcends its sources, fascinating as they are, to welcome all who come to reflect in this temporary immersive and meditative 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 and those for Art+Christianity are here. See also Modern religious art: airbrushed from art history?

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Al Green - People Get Ready.

Monday, 23 January 2023

'Bob Dylan' and 'The Philosophy of Modern Song'

Bob Dylan’s self-titled debut album was released in 1962. It included thirteen songs; two original compositions, with the rest being covers of folk, blues, country and gospel. The album only sold 5,000 copies in its first year of issue and has tended to be overlooked in comparison to the wonders of those albums that quickly followed in its wake. However, it contains, in essence, the seeds of nearly all that Dylan would go on to explore over the course of his lengthy career.

Folk rocker, Frank Turner, says that “You can hear the beginnings of what he was trying to do gathering on this record” because it is “the blueprint” which shows “where he was coming from and, with the benefit of hindsight, what he was heading towards.” Similarly, Campbell Baum has noted that, “What’s great about [Bob Dylan] is it gives you context for the rest of what he did.”

Each genre of song that Dylan included on Bob Dylan has its own significant period in his later career from the early folk albums to his country period, then the gospel albums of the late 70’s and early 80’s to the pre-dominantly blues influenced albums from Time Out of Mind onwards. The only period not really reflected by the song choices on Bob Dylan - although his choice of a song by Jesse Fuller may tip his hat in that direction, given the range of Fuller’s own work - is that of the Great American Songbook as featured on Shadows in the Night, Fallen Angels and Triplicate. The amazing original compositions which featured first on two tracks within Bob Dylan are what gained him his reputation and led to the award of a Nobel Prize and yet covers and covers albums have regularly punctuated his career and renewed his inspiration from the mass of covers among the Basement Tapes through the originally derided Self Portrait to his two acoustic albums from the early 90’s and on to the Christmas album and the three albums mining the Great American Songbook. All these are essentially prefigured by Bob Dylan.

These aspects of Dylan’s debut are worth recalling in relation to The Philosophy of Modern Song, in which Dylan reflects on 66 songs deriving from 1924 through to 2004, and the related interview for the Wall Street Journal following its publication. In that interview, Jeff Slate asked Dylan about his current favourite genre of music and received the following response: “It’s a combination of genres; an abundance of them. Slow ballads, fast ballads, anything that moves. Western Swing, Hillbilly, Jump Blues, Country Blues, everything. Doo-wop, the Ink Spots, the Mills Brothers, Lowland ballads, Bill Monroe, Bluegrass, Boogie-Woogie. Music historians would say when you mix it all up it’s called Rock and Roll. I guess that would be my favorite genre.” The Philosophy of Modern Song bears out the truth of that response being based, as is Bob Dylan, on a diversity of genres. It is that same diversity of genres that leads Dylan away from the purity of the folk movement to Rock and Roll where he can play with genres in a way that he thought not possible when labelled, at that time, as a ‘folk’ singer.

This has, at least, two implications. First, as Robert McCrum has written, “you can find the secret of his greatness, his ability to play at will in the fields of an Anglo-American oral culture that fuses hillbilly blues with the plangent melancholy of the Celt twilight.” His ability to combine genres constitutes a core element of his genius, particularly when combined with his poetic gift. As Dylan tells Slate, a great song “crosses genres” and “is the sum of all things”.

Second, as he told Newsweek’s David Gates in 1997: “Here's the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don't find it anywhere else. Songs like ‘Let Me Rest on a Peaceful Mountain’ or ‘I Saw the Light’ — that's my religion. I don't adhere to rabbis, preachers, evangelists, all of that. I've learned more from the songs than I've learned from any of this kind of entity. The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.” So, when he tells Slate his “first love,” musically speaking, is “sacred music, church music, ensemble singing” and states, “I’m a religious person. I read the scriptures a lot, meditate and pray, light candles in church. I believe in damnation and salvation, as well as predestination. The Five Books of Moses, Pauline Epistles, Invocation of the Saints, all of it”, it is “the religiosity and philosophy in the music” of which he is speaking.

The Philosophy of Modern Song doesn’t offer a philosophy for creating modern songs, instead it describes “the religiosity and philosophy” that Dylan has found in modern songs.

Andrew Tolkmith has written of this in terms of The Philosophy of Modern Song being “deeply rooted in Christian culture.” He begins his argument by suggesting that it is “at least noteworthy, even if it is only pure coincidence, that there are sixty-six chapters, the same as the number of books in a Protestant Bible, and the book is replete with references to Catholicism and Scripture, some more serious and some more flippant.”

He notes, too, that it has “long been argued that Dylan’s music cannot be understood without a deep knowledge of the Bible, and the same is true for the music that Dylan reveres” giving examples from Dylan’s notes on ‘Long Tall Sally’, ‘Blue Bayou’ and ‘If You Don’t Know By Now’:

“Many songs Dylan explores clearly signify elements of Christianity, and for good reason: most of these songs were created in a world that was Christian socially, morally, and cultically. Up through the revolutions of the 1960s, elements of Christendom permeated the wider Western culture and held strong influence in the arts. This holds true in most music genres of the time, the same genres that hold Dylan’s attention in this book: blues, country, folk, bluegrass, jazz, and early rock and roll. Dylan puts it this way in the same chapter on “If You Don’t Know Me by Now”:

One of the reasons people turn away from God is because religion is no longer in the fabric of their lives. It is presented as a thing that must be journeyed to as a chore—it’s Sunday, we have to go to church. Or, it is used as a weapon of threat by political nutjobs on either side of every argument. But religion used to be in the water we drank, the air we breathed. Songs of praise were as spine-tingling as, and in truth the basis of, songs of carnality. Miracles illuminated behavior and weren’t just spectacle.”

Tolkmith concludes: “We have forgotten the musical traditions that form the bedrock of our music, and we need to return to them. If we heed his words, we will find that those traditions matured in a Christian culture.”

As Dylan put it in 1997, in a quote that could form the blurb for The Philosophy of Modern Song: "Those old songs are my lexicon and prayer book. All my beliefs come out of those old songs, literally, anything from `Let Me Rest on that Peaceful Mountain' to `Keep on the Sunny Side.' You can find all my philosophy in those old songs. I believe in a God of time and space, but if people ask me about that, my impulse is to point them back toward those songs. I believe in Hank Williams singing `I Saw the Light.' I've seen the light, too."

And all this was prefigured and there in essence on Bob Dylan.

Read my posts on Dylan and apocalypse here, Springtime in New York here, Trouble No More here, Dylan as Pilgrim here, and all my posts featuring Dylan here. For more on The Philosophy of Modern Song see here. More reflections on Dylan can be found in my co-authored book The Secret Chord.

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Bob Dylan - Gospel Plow.

Monday, 20 June 2022

The Group of Seven

"The Group of Seven (sometimes referred to as the Algonquin School) was Canada's first internationally recognized art movement." They were "a group of Canadian landscape painters from 1920 to 1933, originally consisting of Franklin Carmichael (1890–1945), Lawren Harris (1885–1970), A. Y. Jackson (1882–1974), Frank Johnston (1888–1949), Arthur Lismer (1885–1969), J. E. H. MacDonald (1873–1932), and Frederick Varley (1881–1969). Later, A. J. Casson (1898–1992) was invited to join in 1926, Edwin Holgate (1892–1977) became a member in 1930, and LeMoine FitzGerald (1890–1956) joined in 1932.

Two artists commonly associated with the group are Tom Thomson (1877–1917) and Emily Carr (1871–1945). Although he died before its official formation, Thomson had a significant influence on the group. In an essay, Harris wrote that Thomson was “a part of the movement before we pinned a label on it”; Thomson’s paintings The West Wind and The Jack Pine are two of the group’s most iconic pieces. Emily Carr was also closely associated with the Group, though never an official member."

"The Group was united in the belief that a distinct Canadian art could be developed through direct contact with the country's vast and unique landscape." Christopher Varley and Russell Bingham write that "The group presented the dense, northern boreal forest of the Canadian Shield as a transcendent, spiritual force." MacDonald stated that the Group's aim was "to paint the soul of things [...] the inner feeling rather than the outward form".

"For the Group of Seven, the landscape became akin to a religion. Varley and Harris particularly venerated nature, finding God's immanence within it. From their paintings, Dr. Salem Bland, a leading liberal theologian, stated that he felt, "as if the Canadian soul was unveiling to me something secret and high and beautiful which I had never guessed; a strength and self-reliance, depth and mysticism I had not suspected." Katerina Atanassova says “There is a great deal of spirituality in early twentieth century Canadian art, Varley was very influenced by Buddhism, and many of Lawren Harris’s paintings are based on theosophic principles.”

Jim Friedrich notes that, in 1927, Emily Carr saw an exhibition by the Group and that night wrote in her journal: "Oh, God, what have I seen? Where have I been? Something has spoken to the very soul of me, wonderful, mighty, not of this world. Chords way down in my being have been touched. . . Something has called out of somewhere. Something in me is trying to answer." Carr, at age 56, would go on to begin her most productive period as a painter, exploring the unique spirituality of Canadian landscapes.

Margaret Hirst writes that "Carr yearned to find and express God, and Lawren Harris ... was the catalyst for her great spiritual journey. In addition, Harris befriended and encouraged Carr, offered technical advice, and introduced her to philosophies such as Theosophy and the transcendental poetry of Walt Whitman." "An awe of great expanses became a crucial component of Carr’s religious expression, as she moved away from paintings of native scenes and totems toward a focus on the timbers and skies of the woods. Though Christian, Carr retained the Pantheistic tendencies born in her girlhood, hearing “the myriad voices of God shouting in one great voice: ‘I am one God.... I am heaven. I am earth. I am all in all’.” Her developing religious devotion began to permeate her art." "As she developed her technical skills and style, expression of the Almighty remained foremost in her artistic purpose. By 1934 she could write: “I am painting my own vision now, thinking of no one else’s approach.” Carr had synthesized her faith into a personal, non-dogmatic Christianity, accented by traces of Pantheism, all of which would be reflected in her famous “sky” paintings."

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Bruce Cockburn - Hills of Morning.

Friday, 13 May 2022

Art, London and Religion

Samuel Johnson famously made the urbane observation that "when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.” As this remark was based on the perceived impossibility of intellectuals leaving London “for there is in London all that life can afford," I wonder whether this applies to me, given I have left London after seven years at St Martin-in-the-Fields and 40 years in London all told.

While I don’t feel in the least bit tired of life, I do recognise that, as I leave, there is an opportunity to look back and assess the way in which life, London, art and religion have been connected for me in that time. Nineteen of those years have been spent in ordained ministry during which I have sought to minister in and through the 4 Cs of culture, commerce, compassion, and congregation. I have been involved in initiating church-based art projects in the suburbs of East London and at central London churches such as St Martin’s. Cultural initiatives of which I have been part have included artist collectives, art trails, community art projects, exhibitions, festivals, installations, performances, projections, and workshops, while also writing regularly on the arts in London for mainstream and church publications.

I’m not, of course, the first to undertake such a review. ‘Visualising a Sacred City: London, Art and Religion’ appeared in 2017 claiming to be “the first major examination of the religious imaginary of this great metropolis through the prism of the visual arts.” I can’t compete with that but can provide an update, encapsulating, in part, the impact of a pandemic.

‘Visualising a Sacred City’ described a time in which those three – art, London and religion – got to “tease, play with, brush against, and energise one another.” The book provides a baseline from which to measure my experience. From 2000 onwards – the year in which 'Seeing Salvation: The Image of Christ' was staged at the National Gallery – for public galleries to talk about religion has ceased to be courageous and has become normative in a post-secular and multicultural space. The ground on which these three, play, tease, brush against and energise one another can be variously described as neutral, mutual and, even, holy. What art and religion offer to London, the book suggests, is a way of looking – attention to what is there – which “gives a certain humility to one’s views about what London should and must be” and leads to “shared views of what our habitations are and might be.”

London is home to one of the most ethnically diverse populations in the world. Not only a multicultural city, however, London is also a post-secular city where almost two-thirds of people identify as religious compared with 53% in the rest of UK. How has the relationship between art and religion been impacted by this demographic diversity and to what extent can London, as a result, be viewed as a case study for people going to church to see art, and – potentially - leaving with some religion? These are among the questions to which I have sought answers.

My ordained ministry in London has been bookended by public projection installations engaging with diversity locally and globally and, also, by commissions involving diverse images of Jesus and the disciples. In my curacy at St Margaret’s Barking, we worked with SDNA, a creative studio with a track record of animating galleries and public spaces with bold and imaginative displays to engage new and diverse audiences in fresh and exciting ways. At St Margaret’s, SDNA filmed people from the congregation and then digitally enhanced these images before projecting them onto the windows, roof and tower of the church. This project, called Abbey Happy, turned the church into a temporary artwork that was a blaze of light and colour with moving stained glass showing a diverse congregation at play. The project was part of an evening art trail, called Love & Light in the Town Centre which highlighted, through projections, significant heritage buildings and was organised by the local council through their Arts Services department with funding from the Arts Council.

Community engagement is a key measure for the success of such initiatives and that unlocked involvement for our church, as we were one of the few places locally where people from many of the diverse groups within the area’s population consistently gathered. That fact led to a wider involvement in the Council’s public arts programme including a photographic exhibition, the premiere of a film, and several art workshops.

The same year – 2005 – also saw the unveiling of an original painting commissioned for the Youth Chapel at St Margaret’s, as the climax to a Lent Course which explored images of salvation from conceptual art, figurative paintings, and feature films. Early in the morning was unveiled by the artist Alan Stewart and dedicated by the Bishop of Barking. The painting depicts Christ cooking breakfast for his disciples by Lake Galilee after his resurrection, as told in John 21. Stewart painted a black Christ surrounded by disciples of every ethnic origin to reflect the diverse congregation that worships at St Margaret's.

This image deliberately introduced a black Christ and a diverse collection of disciples into a church in which previously only images of white people were to be seen. The importance of addressing the injustice of that imbalance has been reinforced for me at several points in my ministry but was never more apparent than at the unveiling of this image when our black churchwarden broke down in tears at the sight of the painting.

I wrote an article for Artlyst in 2021 on the same issue, prompted by the National Gallery’s virtual exhibition (due to the pandemic) Sensing the Unseen: Step into Gossaert’s ‘Adoration’, and quoted theologian Robert Beckford who noted that, “Jesus is a man of colour from the ancient near east;” an olive-skinned Palestinian, not a blonde European. If that is so, we need to ask, as Beckford does, how then “did we make him an Aryan and use that image to oppress other people?” I concluded that we need those like Beckford and Benedict Thomas Viviano, who developed the theory that there were both men and women among the Magi, to arrive at a more historically accurate and theologically significant picture of the Magi’s visitation, which involves an inclusive group of Magi visiting a black Christ.

With that understanding, the incarnation and ‘Gentile Christmas’ reveal that God’s heart is on the edge of human society, with those who have been excluded; that God is most evidently encountered among those in the margins and on the edge. Those who have been rejected are then seen to be the energy and the life-force that will transform us all. The life of the church is, as Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, has noted, to be one of continually recognising the sin of how much we have rejected, and celebrating the grace that God gives us back what we once rejected to become the cornerstone of our lives.

More recently I have worked again with Alan Stewart to create a Last Supper that includes disabled people but is also an image in which everyone is invited to come to the table. This picture, with its image of a blind Jesus, was shown first at St Martin-in-the-Fields when it was used this year as an altarpiece at our Lenten Bread for the World Eucharist. The Blind Jesus (No-one belongs here more than you) is an image in charcoal of the Last Supper which includes the central character of a visually impaired Jesus, surrounded by twelve people of differing ages, backgrounds and abilities. An empty chair invites the viewer to find themselves at the table. This Jesus challenges theological and Biblical imagery of blindness as sin or something to be cured.

Stewart's marvellous drawing of the Last Supper gives us an ecumenical or catholic image of the Last Supper through its depiction of a diverse group of disciples surrounding a blind Jesus. This is an image of many who have experienced barriers to inclusion getting in and joining in, with the recognition that experiences of exclusion are central to a faith that sees Jesus become the scapegoat for humanity to remove barriers to encounter with God we had earlier erected. The Jesus who does so bears on his body the marks of his Passion, carrying those signs and experiences into an eternity of unity and communion. His experience of being scapegoated and excluded becomes revelatory and the route by which all can return to community.

In the same way, the experience of disabled people must also become central, as in this image, not through the eradication of disability by means of supernatural healing, but by the eradication of all barriers to communion, so that the insights of all can be received for the benefit and building up of the whole people of God. We need the vision of communion that Stewart shows us – one that Jesus institutes through the Eucharist, shares in parables of the Messianic banquet, and which will become our experience in eternity - in order that we begin to live that future now.

Among those most excluded in London are refugees and asylum seekers. In 2018, St Martin’s hosted Sam Ivin’s Lingering Ghosts exhibition which offered space to contemplate the often-underreported plight of those who wait for the possibility of asylum in a place of limbo, without work, with little money and in temporary accommodation. His exhibition was based on a simple idea, yet one which combines prophetic insight and emotive impact as it speaks truth to power. Ivin physically scratches portraits of asylum seekers erasing their eyes to convey the frustration engendered by the ‘hostile environment’ for migrants, which blights lives and erases the identities of those detained in its clutches. These modified portraits simply and powerfully enable us view the plight of those that wait for asylum.

In 2016, when I was also Priest-in-charge at St Stephen Walbrook in the City of London, Michael Takeo Magruder created a digital installation Lamentation for the Forsaken which juxtaposed the sufferings of the Syrian peoples, including refugees, in our own day with the death of Christ. Takeo evoked the memory of Syrians who had passed away in the conflict by weaving their names and images into a contemporary Shroud of Turin. In this way he reminded us that Christ's death is symptomatic of all suffering throughout time. His work offered “a lamentation not only for the forsaken Christ, but others who have felt his acute pain of abandonment.”

Lamentation for the Forsaken was the 13th Station in a public art project that sought to use the story of the Passion to prompt reflection and action in response to challenges of social justice. Drawing upon the traditional Christian practice of walking and praying the fourteen Stations of the Cross, this project - which began in London in 2016 and has been replicated in Washington DC, New York City, Amsterdam, Deventer, Online, and Toronto - is designed to engage people of all faiths and none. In each city that hosts the project, a team of curators design a bespoke route with fourteen stops, creating a form of contemporary pilgrimage marked by works of art, old and new. The journey weaves through both sacred and secular sites, and often breaks down the boundaries between these categories.

Art trails also provide a marvellous way to encourage visitors to engage with the diversity of art found in many churches, and open to all the spirituality inherent in such art. In 2017, I was involved in the launch of The Art of Faith, a self-guided walk around the City of London, a location containing the greatest concentration of historic churches anywhere in the UK. What is less well known is the extent to which they contain significant examples of art commissioned from the 20th century onwards.

Many of the churches in the City were damaged by bombing during World War II, providing opportunities in the post-war reconstruction to engage with contemporary art. Artworks included in the trail are by prominent modern artists such as Jacob Epstein, Patrick Heron, Damien Hirst, Henry Moore, and Bill Viola, as well as work by other reputable artists such as Thetis Blacker, John Hayward, Keith New and John Skeaping. By encouraging viewers to treat such trails prayerfully as though on pilgrimage, art trails enable visitors to uncover moments where the sacred inhabits the ordinary. Seeking silence and stillness in the busyness of the City is a spiritual exercise that all can explore, whether religious or of no faith. This is particularly so, where each artwork is accompanied by a reflection to help viewers engage spiritually and practically with stillness and prayer.

Deepening faith with the Arts has been a key aspect of the ministry of St Martin-in-the-Fields for many years including initiatives such as Great Sacred Music and annual Passion and Nativity Plays. ‘Inspired to Follow: Art and the Bible Story’ is a discipleship course which uses fine art paintings from the National Gallery (on St Martin’s doorstep), a Biblical story and a short theological reflection, as springboards to help explore Christian faith today. The course was designed by Alastair McKay, with input from the wider clergy team, while he was a curate at St Martin’s. Alastair says: “What people love about the course is engaging with a single visual image over the course of each session, in conversation with others, in the light of some initial reflections about us and God. Different people see different things within a painting, as they do within a Bible story. And they connect what they observe to their lives, in diverse ways.” ‘Inspired to Follow’ developed a new life online during the pandemic and became a much-valued source of inspiration and ideas for many during lockdown.

More recently, St Martin’s has supported the National Gallery in creating an Interfaith Sacred Art Network in London. This began with the theme of Crossing Borders, inspired through two paintings by Orazio Gentileschi: The National Gallery’s The Finding of Moses, and The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, loaned to the National Gallery by Birmingham Museums Trust. The network began with a symposium featuring a wonderfully diverse array of talks on sacred texts, opportunities to view the paintings together, a special service at St Martin’s, and a dinner to celebrate the formation of the new network. In the paper I presented, I suggested that Gentileschi’s decisions regarding the gender and class of those depicted provide an interpretive crux relating to the arc of the story as it bends towards liberation. Drawing parallels between the liberation found in the Exodus and experiences of the English Revolution that began shortly after the creation of Gentileschi’s painting, I suggested that the painting gestures towards the future crossing of boundaries in relation to gender and class without realising them fully in the present.

As with T.S. Eliot, in my end is my beginning. I began with a projection installation and end with another, this time at St Martin’s. Fields of Vision was an immersive exterior projection created by Marcus Lyon. The work, which covered the whole church façade at its East End, explored concepts of freedom, service and community in our modern world through oral histories, large scale portraits and ancestral DNA mapping, with music by Brian Eno. The piece wove together the narratives of 28 extraordinary individuals from across the globe - changemakers chosen by their own communities - to tell a deeper story of our interdependence and the extraordinary power of collaboration.

Lyons’ Human Atlas projects, on which Fields of Vision was based, are social impact art projects that bring together a specified number of nominated change agents to tell a deeper story about how we self-author and co-author a more hopeful future through portraits, interviews, soundscapes and DNA mapping. The DNA mapping highlights the vital part migration plays in human civilisation and community. Lyons’ i.Detroit Human Atlas project, for example, involved collating 1,202 pieces of information over the course of two years, including the ancestral DNA of 100 individuals from Detroit, yet with 91 places of origin, and maps of migration journeys out of Africa that date back thousands of years.

In these ways, exploring London’s diversity affectively and engagingly through the visual arts in the context of faith has involved community engagement, partnership working, creation of inclusive images, explorations of current social issues, attractional events, and pilgrimage style trails. These have drawn new groups to churches and have enabled other agencies to engage with diverse congregations. Being with and paying attention to those on the edge while involving such groups in art projects has also been key, as has working across a range of different media and approaches. Migration has been central to London’s diversity, multi-culturalism, and post-secular identity, so engaging creatively, constructively, imaginatively and theologically with this issue has been at the heart of this survey; an approach that has been counter-cultural in a time when the UK has been a hostile environment for migrants.

Attending to the many ways in which public galleries now discuss art and religion, while taking opportunities to form partnerships has also enabled creative reach. Art trails and digital projects in particular have connected sacred and secular spaces, dissolving some boundaries between both in the process. Projection installations in particular inhabit the public square. Such interactions provoke new conversations - conducted with humility - concerning what London should and must be and also what our habitations – temporal and eternal - are and might be. As a visitor to an exhibition held at St Stephen Walbrook once noted, churches are extraordinary places for such extraordinarily broad-minded, human and thought-provoking exhibitions to be held. It is the thought-provoking nature of these interactions which open the already religious to the wonder of art and the non-religious to the possibility of faith.

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Ricky Ross - London Comes Alive.