Gods' Collections

Yesterday I led a tour of artworks at St Martin-in-the-Fields as part of a seminar in the Gods' Collections programme.

Places of worship of all traditions have always accumulated collections. Today some have generated great art museums, while others just keep a few old things in a sacristy cupboard. The Gods' Collections project looks at why and how these collections have developed, how they have been looked after, and how understanding of them has changed over the millennia.

See https://www.artlyst.com/features/the-art-of-st-martin-in-the-fields-by-revd-jonathan-evens/ and https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&u=googlescholar&id=GALE|A490551178&v=2.1&it=r&sid=googleScholar&asid=c5c4eb6d
for my earlier articles on the art of St Martin-in-the-Fields.

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St Martin-in-the-Fields - Great Sacred Music.

Street Requiem

On Thursday Sept 20 at 8pm in St Cuthbert's Parish Church Edinburgh, ‘Sing The World’ will be presenting the Edinburgh premiere of the award winning STREET REQUIEM, In memory of all those who have died nameless, homeless or innocent on streets around the globe.featuring singers from Australia, USA and Scotland and The Highland Divas from the USA in support of the Grassmarket's Project Choir!

BOOK ONLINE NOW AT: www.trybooking.com/XHSQ

Earlier the same day is Bill Viola & the art of contemplation: a HeartEdge church & culture seminar, Thursday 20 September, 2.00 – 5.30pm, The Parish Church of St Cuthbert, 5 Lothian Road, Edinburgh EH1 2EP. 

St Cuthbert's is currently showing Bill Viola's 'Three Women' (http://www.st-cuthberts.net/info/viola2.pdf) and this seminar has been organised as the final event that the church is hosting relating to the installation.

The seminar will focus on:

• approaches to curating exhibitions in churches (Revd Matthew Askey, Chaplain Southwell Minster); 
• Bill Viola's church-located installations (Laura Moffatt, Director Art + Christianity); and 
• art as contemplative or meditative practice (Alexander de Cadenet, artist, and Revd Jonathan Evens, Associate Vicar St Martin-in-the-Fields). 

Register for free tickets at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bill-viola-the-art-of-contemplation-tickets-48161881484.

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Street Requiem - Ubi Caritas.

HeartEdge Great Sacred Music Seminar

Learn about the genesis of Great Sacred Music (a 35-minute lunchtime sequence of words and music speaking to heart, head and soul) together with Revd Dr Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields and Andrew Earis, Director of Music, St Martin-in-the-Fields.

An opportunity to discuss:

• growing a new congregation;
• engaging with music lovers;
• using music in mission;
• sharing faith insights with secular audiences.

Free to HeartEdge members, £10 for others. Register with Revd Jonathan Evens at jonathan.evens@smitf.org or 020 7766 1127.

For more information, see
http://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/church/worship/partnerships/

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Great Sacred Music.

HeartEdge Start:Stop Seminar

Learn about the genesis of Start:Stop (10-minute work-based reflections for people on their way to work) together with Revd Jonathan Evens, Associate Vicar Partnership, St Martin-in-the-Fields, and Priest-in-charge, St Stephen Walbrook.

An opportunity to discuss:
• growing a new congregation;
• engaging with working people;
• ministering in the workplace;
• communicating with busy people.

Free to HeartEdge members, £10 for others. Register with Revd Jonathan Evens at jonathan.evens@smitf.org or 020 7766 1127.

For more information, see
http://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/church/worship/partnerships/.

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Duke Special - Something Might Happen.

Sophia Hub Redbridge - Update

Ros Southern writes:

'Coming up this week:

• Entrepreneur's club on marketing on Tuesday at 12 noon at Enterprise Desk with Otatade Okojie.She is a start-up business and speaking is part of her marketing! She has 10 years experience and we'll do pitching practice and lots more. Take a look!. Info here, please book and pass on the word.
• Timebank trading event on Saturday 1-3 at Enterprise Desk, Ilford Library. A fabulous, unexpected, communty and business building opportunity. Info here, please book and pass on the word.

Other great initiatives and opportunities...

• For any community group, big or small, join up to the Enterprising Redbridge support. Next business seminar is Weds 19 June at 5.30. Info here
• Myra Whiskar is offering coaching for start-ups - we think we've found her two candidates but there may be room for one more. Info here
• The next 3 hour free intro to starting your own business workshop with London Small business centre is 19 July. Book here
• City Business Library fantastic seminars are continuing daily (weekdays) as usual – cheap or free.Info here
• Its tech week coming up and our entrepreneur's club is teeming up with Enterprise Desk for a tech –build your first business phone app on Friday 24 June 6pm. Some booking info here, more to follow
• Seven Kings park is looking for a refreshments van - business opportunity! info here

Best wishes,

Ros Southern
Coordinator, Sophia Hubs Redbridge
W: www.sophiahubs7k.wordpress.com 

M: 07707 460309 / 020 8590 2568 (answerphone)
T: @sophiahubs7k F: Sophia Hubs Seven Kings'

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The Style Council - Headstart For Happiness.

Update: Sophia Hub Redbridge

Ro Southern writes:

"Entrepreneur's club speaker on Tuesday lunchtime is fashion photographer Jasdip Sagu - he's a new business, doing well, and will share his tips and contacts. A Seven Kings guy.read more here (At St Johns)

Very pleased with the new Sophia Hubs volunteer bloggers - Janet and Amanda! Here's a couple more this week - Janet's blog about the value of an Enterprising Desk website workshop and her two new website for 2 start-up busineses and info on the City business library. Amanda's doing one over the weekend. Room for more bloggers!

The Timebank trading event last Saturday was great - here's a blog from Brenda the painter/decorator about the paid work she's got from Timebank and a couple of positive outcomes from the event. Hoping Bhav will do one too - a reminder.

We also had a successful first business seminar with community groups last week - info, pics and how to sign up to the project here. Sonia Lynch of the Welcome Centre says the session was great and she could not afford to miss any further ones. :)

Here's a call out for speakers at our entrepreneur's club - please do contact me. The dates for next 3 months are here. :)

Still time for any groups or start-ups that want to join a Sophia course workshop on planning something new/partcipatory/engaging at the Redbridge Green Fair (a mini project to plan and test)information is here. Wednesday afternoons, info here.

Hainault Business Network event will be on Tuesday at 5 at the Hainault cafe. Info on previous one here - always first Tuesday. contact Sandie for info:sandie@notjusttravel.com 07940 716554

Here's Amanda's recommendation about the City Business Show on 11-12 May

Please do share Sophia Hubs blogs, Facebook posts etc, and also The Redbridge Green Fair, my other hat!

Have a great weekend,

Best wishes,

Ros Southern
Coordinator, Sophia Hubs Redbridge
07707 460309"

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Iris Dement - Our Town.

Legal Aesthetics and the Architectural Ambiguities of St Stephen Walbrook

In this Research Seminar at the Courtauld Institute, Timothy Hyde addressed the theme of incongruity in modern architecture through examination of the installation of an altar sculpted by Henry Moore in 1972 into St Stephen Walbrook, a church designed by Christopher Wren in 1672.

Hyde began by noting a coexistence of eras in this installation with connections between the moments of rebuilding inherent in the 1960s and post-Great Fire of London. Neo-classical services had the pulpit as the focal point ensuring that those in box pews could see and hear the preacher, while the altar was smaller and less visible. By 1967, when the idea of a new stone altar began to emerge at St Stephen Walbrook, celebrations of Communion had become more frequent, the box pews had been replaced as part of the erosion of class privilege and the socially engaged Rector, Chad Varah, asked Henry Moore to forget all altars he had seen previously and think in terms of the primitive, rough-hewn altars of the Old Testament. In line with an increased sense of spatial and emotional proximities, it was proposed that a circular altar be centrally placed under Wren's dome.

There was no formal opposition to the altar at the beginning of the faculty process but, as the City and parish has few residents, the Archbishop registered an objection in order that the case be heard by the London Consistory Court. There, the arguments revolved around aesthetic and theological issues. Debate included the effect on Wren's severely geometrical design of introducing a form that was tactile and indeterminate. The resulting focus on the dome and the square within which it is set could also represss the longitudinal axis of Wren's design. These are debates regarding congruence and how it is defined and assessed. This debate saw similar aesthetic arguments made to those used at about the same time in relation to the extension to the National Gallery and the construction of both Lloyds of London and No. 1 Poultry.  

At the Consistory Court, however, it was theological issues that proved definitive. These concerned the definition of an altar in regard to the Canons of the Church of England and a precedent set in relation to a restoration of the Ecclesiological Society of the Round Church in Cambridge in 1845. There a fixed stone altar had been introduced as part of a restoration looking back to the original Romanesque design of the church. However, the Canons, based as they were on the theology of the Reformers, said that communion should be celebrated from a table not an altar, as Communion is a remembering, not a repeat, of Christ's sacrifice. The precedent set through the case of the Round Church was that a table, while it could be of stone, could not be fixed without becoming an altar. At the Consistory Court hearing Chancellor GH Newsom QC ruled that the Moore sculpture was an altar not a table and therefore was not congruent with the Canons. In doing so, he also established that uniformity of architecture cannot be given precedence over theological or doctrinal issues within the Church of England.

An appeal was then able to be made to the Court of Ecclesiastical Causes Reserved because the judgement had turned on a doctrinal issue. This Court was not bound by earlier precedents and could consider issue afresh. This Court preferred a broader definition of table to that used by the Chancellor and on this basis agreed that the altar could be installed. Their decision and debates in arriving at that decision were symptomatic of post-modern awareness of the ambiguities of language. The Consistory Court decision was compatible with the thinking of late modernity, while that of the Court of Ecclesiastical Causes Reserved was consistent with post-modern ideas.

The implications of this installation tested and exceeded conventional frameworks of explication such as intentionality or style, and in so doing opened a view onto intricate exchanges between otherwise incommensurable registers of judgment. Unfolding the complicated legal and aesthetic history of this particular architectural, sculptural, and theological act suggested possibilities for considering facets of architectural postmodernity outside of the disciplinary frameworks of architecture itself.

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The Hollies - He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother. 

Legal Aesthetics and the Architectural Ambiguities of St Stephen Walbrook

 

The Henry Moore altar at St Stephen Walbrook continues to prove controversial, if the description of a forthcoming Modernities: Architecture, Design, Theory Research Seminar in the Courtauld Institute of Art is an accurate reflection of the argument which Timothy Hyde (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) will make.

Hyde's seminar is entitled Legal Aesthetics and the Architectural Ambiguities of St Stephen Walbrook and will take place at 4.30pm on Friday 15 January 2016 in the Sackler Research Forum Seminar Room, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN.

Hyde will address the theme of incongruity in modern architecture through an examination of a significant but largely unrecognized act of postmodernism: the installation of an altar sculpted by Henry Moore in 1972 into a church designed by Christopher Wren in 1672. The implications of this installation test and exceed conventional frameworks of explication such as intentionality or style, and in so doing open a view onto intricate exchanges between otherwise incommensurable registers of judgment. Unfolding the complicated legal and aesthetic history of this particular architectural, sculptural, and theological act suggests possibilities for considering facets of architectural postmodernity outside of the disciplinary frameworks of architecture itself.

If Hyde genuinely believes Moore's altar to be incongruous in the context of one of Sir Christopher's Wren's masterpiece then he is at odds with the response of most people when they visit St Stephen Walbrook itself. The overwhelming majority of people I speak with at the church find the combination of modern and traditional art and architecture to be a stunning and sensitive harmonization of old and new.

Dr. Timothy Hyde is Clarence H. Blackall Associate Professor in Architectural History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of Constitutional Modernism: Architecture and Civil Society in Cuba, 1933-1959, and is the chair of the Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative. Hyde’s work focuses on intersections of architecture and politics, with a particular attention to entanglements between architecture and law in the modern period. His current research project, “Dread of Beauty,” examines aesthetic debates on ugliness in Great Britain from the 17th
to the 20th century. His talk on St Stephen Walbrook is part of this research, which also includes his essay “Some Evidence of Libel, Criticism, and Publicity in the Architectural Career of Sir John Soane,” published in Perspecta. Hyde’s writings on modern architecture and architectural theory have also appeared in journals such as Log, Praxis, the Journal of Architectural Education (JAE), and Thresholds. Hyde has been a MacDowell Colony Fellow and his work has been supported by grants from the Graham Foundation. He received his BA from Yale University, MArch from Princeton University, and PhD from Harvard University.

The seminar has been organised by Dr Robin Schuldenfrei (Katja and Nicolai Tangen Lecturer in 20th Century Modernism, The Courtauld Institute of Art) and is open to all, Admission is free.

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James MacMillan - A New Song.