Sculpturetown

Emmaus mosaic by John Piper

Crucifixion by Ruzkowski at St Paul's Harlow

The Rooks by Betty Swanwick in the Gibberd Gallery

Family Group by Henry Moore

As a result of a commission4mission meeting in Harlow I have had the opportunity to see a little of the art that is on public view in the town.

Harlow is a town designed and built after the Second World War, entirely master-planned by the late Sir Frederick Gibberd and in possession of the largest municipal collection of post-war sculpture in Britain.

Founded in 1953 by Gibberd, the Harlow Art Trust is one of Britain's leading regional arts organisations. Over the past fifty years it has built up a remarkable collection of sculptures by some of the leading names in modern and contemporary art, that attracts visitors to Harlow from all over the world.

To walk around the centre of Harlow is to experience a large-scale open-air art museum. In it you can see work by Auguste Rodin, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Ralph Brown, Lynn Chadwick, Lee Grandjean, Elizabeth Frink and many others.

The Trust also runs the Gibberd Art Gallery in Harlow, which is home to a major collection of watercolour paintings and drawing by British modern masters, including Graham Sutherland, John Piper, Elizabeth Blackadder, Prunella Clough, Betty Swanwick and others. The Gallery is also the location for a series of temporary exhibitions, some by local artists and art groups, and others by nationally and internationally-renowned artists.

The Trust continues to purchase and commission new sculpture and other works of art from new and established artists, and whenever possible sites these in publicly-accessible areas of Harlow for everyone to enjoy.

My meeting was with Martin Harris, Rector of St Paul's Harlow, and Roman Vasseur, who is the lead artist working with the partners regenerating the market quarter of Harlow. Vasseur is formulating a strategy for the integration of art into the regeneration process and the future life of the town.

His programme began with a number of contemporary art commissions in Harlow titled ‘Art and the new town’ Let us pray for those Now Residing in the Designated Area. The title came from the beginning of the dedication prayer used when Harlow was created. St Paul's Harlow (designed by Humphrys and Hurst and including the first mural by John Piper) was among the venues used by Vasseur for this programme.

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The Style Council - Come To Milton Keynes.

One of us

I've been asked what appropriate images of Christ there might be for use on a council housing estate parish in the Diocese of Carlisle. This raises issues as to why images that resonate with folk elsewhere shouldn't also resonate with those on council housing estates but is, in this case, I think simply a request for images of Christ with an urban context.

I suggested that the best place to start may be with Peter Howson. Howson has established a formidable reputation as one of his generation's leading figurative painters. Many of his paintings derive inspiration from the streets of Glasgow, where he was brought up. He is renowned for his penetrating and vigorous insight into the human condition, and his heroic portrayals of the mighty and meek.

Steven Berkoff has written that:

"Peter Howson's work tends to arrest you in your tracks; it grabs you by the throat and then leaves you feeling quite different to the way you were before. His bodies flow in a horrendous voluptuous twist of flesh, like think-coded branches of trees. They seem almost torn out of the earth itself; it's as if they were heaved from its bowels. He paints in a style that reminds you of Breughel and William Blake, using terrible mythic figures as he puts the modern world into his fables."

Examples of Howson's work can be found by clicking here and here. In a similar but possibly more ironic vein Kosta Kulundzic.

There is also a strand of contemporary art that sets Biblical stories and imagery in contemporary settings. There have been many Modern artists producing this kind of work from Stanley Spencer through Carel Weight to Betty Swanwick. Mark Cazalet is a good example of an artist working out of this tradition and using much urban imagery as he does so. Examples Can be found here, here, here, here, here and here.

Two books worth looking at in this vein are 'Angels of Soho' by Anna and Norman Adams and 'Allegories of Heaven' by Dinah Roe Kendall.

Albert Herbert was an artist with a powerful and original poetic vision. For five decades he consistently painted surprising and dream-like images—these seemingly naïve yet sophisticated paintings were the result of his life-long journey exploring 'what lies beneath the surface of the mind'. See a wonderful Passion painting here.

The website for the Asian Christian Art Association has a wide range of work grouped according to Biblical themes.

I am involved with a new arts organisation called commission4mission which aims to encourage the commissioning and placing of contemporary Christian Art in churches, as a means of fundraising for charities and as a mission opportunity for the churches involved. Henry Shelton is the founder of the organisation and examples of his work can be found here, here and here.

Temporary or public art can often work well in an urban setting as in projects with which I have been involved - see here, here, here and here. Finally, here is a contemporary resurrection image that I was involved in commissioning from Alan Stewart.

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Joan Osborne & Outta Control - One Of Us.

Everyday epiphanies

Another book that I found in the RA's bookshop was Betty Swanwick: Artist and Visionary.

Swanwick described herself as "part of a small tradition of English panting that is a bit eccentric, a little odd and a little visionary." This tradition begins with William Blake and Samuel Palmer and continues through Stanley Spencer and Cecil Collins to artists such as Albert Herbert, Ken Kiff, Norman Adams, Evelyn Williams, Carel Weight, Margaret Neve, Roger Wagner, Mark Cazalet, Dinah Roe-Kendall and Greg Tricker.

In the book Paddy Rossmore writes that Swanwick had in common with many other artists in this tradition, "the pursuit of the hidden reality behind appearance or - more specifically in her case - the connection between religious phenomena and psychic (or subliminal) processes." "She talked of 'biblical goings-on' in her late work" and "painted many pictures which relate to the great religious themes and stories from the Old and New Testaments." Rossmore argues that her late work "would seem to belong to that tradition in visionary painting whose strangeness is accompanied by a facility for penetrating spiritual insight and understanding."

The work of many of the artists in this tradition seeks to reveal everyday epiphanies, heaven in ordinary life, and Swanwick was no exception writing that she felt that "many people narrow life much too much" and so in her pictures she tried "to put the real thing, the miracle of it - indefinable because everything is connected."

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The Kinks - Days.