ArtWay: Photographing Religious Practice

My latest article for ArtWay is entitled Photographing Religious Practice and discusses the increasing prevalence of photographic series and books exploring aspects of religious practice:

"Gorick’s discoveries provided her with a completely different perspective on the City of London and her hope now is that her photographs will inspire others to push open church doors and explore their spiritual nuances.

Similarly with the work of Mandle, Polidori and Tomlinson, where the beauty of their photographs, encourages us to go beyond their images by entering the history, tradition and reality of peaceful prayerfulness to which they connect."

I have previously written about Niki Gorick here, S. Billie Mandle here, Alys Tomlinson here, 

Markéta Luskacová here, and Robert Polidori here.

My Church of the Month reports for ArtWay are: Aylesford Priory, Canterbury Cathedral, Chapel of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, Hem, Chelmsford Cathedral, Churches in Little Walsingham, Coventry Cathedral, Église de Saint-Paul à Grange-Canal, Eton College Chapel, Lumen, Metz Cathedral, Notre Dame du Léman, Notre-Dame de Toute Grâce, Plateau d’Assy,Romont, Sint Martinuskerk Latem, St Aidan of Lindisfarne, St Alban Romford, St. Andrew Bobola Polish RC Church, St. Margaret’s Church, Ditchling, and Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft, St Mary the Virgin, Downe, St Michael and All Angels Berwick, and St Paul Goodmayes, as well as earlier reports of visits to sites associated with Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, Antoni Gaudi and Henri Matisse.

My visual meditations for ArtWay include work by María Inés Aguirre, Giampaolo Babetto, Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Alexander de Cadenet, Christopher Clack, Marlene Dumas, Terry Ffyffe, Antoni Gaudi, Nicola Green, Maciej Hoffman, Lakwena Maciver, S. Billie Mandle, Giacomo Manzù, Michael Pendry, Maurice Novarina, Regan O'Callaghan, Ana Maria Pacheco, John Piper, Nicola Ravenscroft, Albert Servaes, Henry Shelton, Anna Sikorska and Edmund de Waal.

Interviews for ArtWay include: Sophie Hacker and Peter Koenig. I also interviewed ArtWay founder Marleen Hengelaar Rookmaaker for Artlyst.

I have also reviewed: Art and the Church: A Fractious Embrace, Kempe: The Life, Art and Legacy of Charles Eamer Kempe, and Jazz, Blues, and Spirituals.

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

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Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus - Bright Field.

Alys Tomlinson & Markéta Luskacová: Ex Voto & Pilgrims

My latest review for Church Times compares and contrasts Alys Tomlinson's Ex-Voto photographic series on the theme of Pilgrimage with the Bohemia-born British-based photographer Markéta Luskacová’s documentary series Pilgrims, currently on show at Tate Britain.

Mike Trow, chair of judges for the Sony World Photography Awards 2018, says that Ex-Voto is a sensitive illustration of the “idea of pilgrimage as a journey of discovery and sacrifice to a greater power” through “quiet images, beautifully produced, with a calm, spiritual feel that is at odds with so much of our frenetic lives”.

'Luskacová wanted to record the pilgrims’ way of life, because she thought that it would not survive for much longer. Tomlinson’s fascination with contemporary pilgrimage and the warmth of reception for her images reveal the enduring strength of pilgrimage as a human endeavour that has not been lost in the period from 1967 to 2018. Tomlinson’s images reveal the endurance of faith in the 21st century.'

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Norah Jones - Sunrise.

Spiritual power and sensitive engagement that define pilgrimage

Alys Tomlinson has been named Photographer of the Year in the 2018 Sony World Photography Awards for her series Ex-Voto.

Tomlinson says:

'‘Ex-Voto’ is an extension of my previous work in Lourdes. Still intrigued by this place of great spiritual contemplation and worship, I re-visited the project with a different approach. Shooting in large format black and white slowed the process down and gave me space to think. Using anthropological experience gained during my MA, I became interested in the markers left behind at pilgrimage sites. Placed anonymously and often hidden from view, ‘Ex-Votos’ are offerings left by pilgrims as signs of gratitude and devotion, creating a tangible narrative between faith, person and the landscape. Taken at the pilgrimage sites of Lourdes (France), Ballyvourney (Ireland) and Grabarka (Poland), the project encompasses formal portraiture, large format landscape and small, detailed still-lifes of the objects and markers left behind.'

'Mike Trow, the chair of the judges and former picture editor for British Vogue, said: “Alys Tomlinson is a worthy overall winner for telling a story so beautifully, quietly, and yet with a spiritual power that spoke of her sensitive engagement with the subjects and places that help define pilgrimage.”'

The 2018 Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition is at Somerset House until 6 May and features inspirational works by more than 600 artists, the exhibition showcases winning and shortlisted works from the 2018 Sony World Photography Awards, the world’s most diverse photography competition. Curated by Trow, the images are specially selected from a record-breaking number of submissions. The 2018 Awards cover a wide variety of genres, from architecture to landscape, street photography to wildlife, portraiture to travel.

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Karl Jenkins - Benedictus.

Greenbelt diary (2)

'Visionaries' exhibition

Paintings by Clive Hicks-Jenkins in the 'Visionaries' exhibition

Paintings by Phillipa Claydon in the 'Visionaries' exhibition

Sixpence None the Richer

Sixpence None the Richer

My Greenbelt began, as is often the case (and one of the best reasons for going), by an unplanned meeting with friends and the chance to share some food together as we swapped notes on what we planned to see and do over the Festival.

One of the first things that I did was to visit the Visionaries exhibition and chat with its curators, Meryl & Malcolm Doney from the Wallspace gallery. The exhibition brings together a selection of recent and contemporary artists working in the Visionary Art tradition - which has its roots in the work of William Blake, Goya and Samuel Palmer – i.e. those who explore with passion the territories of the spiritual, the religious and the human condition. This version of the exhibition, which was originally shown at Wallspace, had a slightly reduced range of artists exhibited but this had the positive effect that some of the less well known artists in the exhibition, such Clive Hicks-Jenkins, Phillipa Claydon, Harry Adams and Brian Whelan, could be more fully represented.

Dave Tomlinson spoke about 'Church without borders' by viewing conversion as a process and way of life and churches as the hands, feet and heart of Christ in their communities. His talk seemed to me to be a summary of what I see us being to a limited extent and what I want us to become more fully at St Johns Seven Kings and, as a result, I will post separately a fuller set of notes from this session.

In an aside he spoke about Jesus writing in sand which led on to my writing the following meditation:

You wrote
in sand
impermanent
washed away
in rain
swept away
by hand
You wrote
in speech
unrecorded
no scribes
journos or
dictaphones
at your feet
You wrote
in flesh
crucified
breath hammered
and beaten
from your
lungs

You wrote
in sand
a pregnant
pause
causing stones
to fall
from condemning
hands
You wrote
in speech
everyday
stories
turning our
worlds
upside down
You wrote
in flesh
an emptying
of self
filling
empty lives
with love

Finally Sixpence None The Richer played a great set which included most of their very wonderful Divine Discontent album, some crowd-pleasers in 'Kiss Me' and 'There She Goes', as well as new material for their next album. Matt Slocum and Leigh Nash went their separate ways after making Divine Discontent as Matt explained in the Greenbelt programme: "Leigh and I had been making music together since we were teenagers. As we approached our 30s, there was a bit of restlessness to explore other things, but in the midst of this exploration, I felt a void open up, like I needed to be making music with Leigh." I, for one, am glad to see them reunited and making great music together.

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Sixpence None the Richer - Melody of You.