Kirby Laing Centre Conference: First Things First

 

This week I've been at the Kirby Laing Centre Conference in Cambridge.

The Kirby Laing Centre is an academic research centre concerned with public theology we seek to do rigorous scholarship across the disciplines addressing the great issues of our day from a Christian view point. They also seek to foster and nurture Christian scholarship that is rooted in spirituality and practised in community.

The theme for their inaugural conference was First Things First: Spirituality and Public Theology. Our aim at KLC is to accompany the Spirit on his mission, and in order to do this we need continually to attend to our spiritual formation. The journey in – spirituality – opens out to the journey out – our vocations in the world, and both are essential if we are to be salt and light. The conference explored the vital importance of deep spiritual formation for Christian public engagement, and promises thought-provoking key-note presentations, art, music, poetry, book launches, community, and many other avenues of enjoyment of God’s good world. KLC Director Craig Bartholomew gave two keynote addresses on The One Thing Necessary.

The arts track at the Conference was put together by Otto Bam, a musician, writer and researcher born and raised in Bloemfontein, South Africa. He is the Arts Manager for the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology and editor of ArtWay.eu.

We heard from the following:

• Violist Rachel Yonan, who has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in concert halls across the United States, Switzerland, Italy, Austria and China. A lover of chamber music, Rachel co-founded the Marinus Ensemble with her brother, cellist Joseph Kuipers. Marinus aim to allow culture and excellence to reach broader audiences. She spoke on music’s gratuitous beauty in a logocentric world.
• Playwright and author, Murray Watts, gave a lecture on art and spirituality. He has worked in TV, radio, film and theatre, winning awards and critical acclaim.and set up The Wayfarer Trust, a charity which seeks to encourage people from all walks of life to value the arts and to actively support all those striving for excellence and spiritual inspiration in the world of arts and media.
• Fr Dominic White OP is a Dominican friar and priest at Blackfriars, Cambridge. He is the author of The Lost Knowledge of Christ: Contemporary Spiritualities, Christian Cosmology and the Arts (Liturgical Press, 2015), and How Do I Look: Theology in the Age of the Selfie (SCM, 2020). He is also an organist, pianist and composer.
• Roger Henderson led us in celebrating the launch of his and Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker’s new edited volume, The Artistic Sphere, and unveiling the brand-new ArtWay.eu website (which will be online at the end of June), an online arts and faith publication founded by Marleen, which came under KLC’s stewardship in 2023.
• Bishop Graham Kings guided us in thinking about the potential of art for facilitating missional and spiritual encounters, referencing Bulgarian artist Silvia Dimitrova’s paintings of Seven Women of the Bible, which he and his wife commissioned. The series includes Sarah, Miriam, Ruth, Esther, Magdalene, Lydia and Priscilla. Bishop Graham has written a poem on each painting and Tristan Latchford has written an anthem on each painting and poem.

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Oddo Bam - The MorningThe Morning.

The Life, Art and Legacy of Charles Eamer Kempe

My most recent book review has been published by ArtWay and is of Adrian Barlow's Kempe: The Life, Art and Legacy of Charles Eamer Kempe (Lutterworth Press 2018).

'Kempe offers a radical revaluation of the life, work and reputation of Charles Eamer Kempe (1837–1907), one of the most remarkable and influential figures in late Victorian and Edwardian church art. Kempe's name became synonymous with a distinctive style of stained glass, furnishing and decoration deriving from late mediaeval and early Renaissance models. To this day, his hand can be seen in churches and cathedrals worldwide.

Drawing on newly available archive material, Adrian Barlow evaluates Kempe's achievement in creating a Studio or School of artists and craftsmen who interpreted his designs and remained fiercely loyal to his aesthetic and religious ideals. He assesses his legacy and reputation today, as well as exploring his networks of patrons and influence, which stretched from the Royal Family and the Church of England hierarchy to the literary and artistic beau monde. These networks intersected at Kempe's stunning Sussex country house, Old Place, his 'Palace of Art'. Created to embody his ideals of beauty and history, it holds the key to understanding his contradictory personality, his public and private faces.'

In the review, I state that: 'Kempe’s is a fascinating story of a self-made man in tune with his own era who built a brand able to endure for sixty years. In common with A.W.N. Pugin, William Morris and G.F. Watts, he also created a home which fully expressed his personal inspiration and vision and was considered a masterpiece in its day. In one volume Barlow tells Kempe’s story and that of his collaborators, assesses key works and considers Kempe’s legacy and reputation. He brings Kempe’s faith-full practice to life while arguing for the ongoing significance of work based on an unchanging belief that past styles of faith were the best expression for contemporary faith.'

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Edward Elgar - The Spirit Of The Lord.

Compton Verney: The Shakespeare Gallery & Shakespeare in Art

Compton Verney is an independent national art gallery and ‘Capability’ Brown landscape located nine miles from Stratford-upon-Avon. Its current exhibitions celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death.

'With the legendary actor-manager David Garrick serving as Shakespeare's high priest, bardolatry swept mid-18th-century England to the point that painters, too, reproduced the words and scenes that actors portrayed onstage. The artists' response on canvas, of course, was not entirely devotional. Prints of their paintings also earned them a pretty penny.

In this they were helped by the public's growing familiarity with at least a dozen Shakespeare plays, notably "Hamlet," "King Lear," "Othello," "Romeo and Juliet" and "Richard III."' (Alan Riding, NY Times)

This is where Compton Verney's exhibitions begin. Boydell’s Vision: The Shakespeare Gallery in the 18th Century traces the history of John Boydell’s famous Shakespeare Gallery which opened in 1789 on London’s Pall Mall. The Shakespeare Gallery was the first thematic public exhibition of its time and also the first devoted to the Bard.

Using Shakespeare as a vehicle for the development of a national school of history painting, the print publisher John Boydell commissioned prominent painters, sculptors and printmakers of the day, including George Romney, Henry Fuseli and James Northcote, to produce works depicting scenes from all of Shakespeare’s plays.

Boydell’s Vision is the first exhibition in the UK to explore the formation of this early blockbuster, and includes paintings and prints by the artists commissioned by Boydell, as well as a recent digital reconstruction of The Shakespeare Gallery as it looked in 1796.

The example of Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery provides the inspiration for the theatrical design of Compton Verney's other Shakespeare exhibition. Shakespeare in Art: Tempests, Tyrants and Tragedy offers an opportunity for art and theatre lovers to discover his works through a unique series of theatrical encounters. These include paintings, photography, projection and a sound score and readings by leading Royal Shakespeare Company actors.

Shakespeare was a master of dramatising human emotions in their myriad forms. His plays are as relevant to us today as they were over 400 years ago and they remain a vital source of inspiration to artists. This major new exhibition focuses on pivotal Shakespeare plays, including The Tempest, Hamlet, Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, all of which have motivated artists across the ages, from George Romney, Henry Fuseli, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Singer Sargent and G.F. Watts to Karl Weschke, Kristin & Davy McGuire and Tom Hunter.

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Kate Tempest - What We Came After.

Brilliant Brits: Bomberg, Carrington, Gertler, Holl, Nash, Nevinson, Spencer and Watts

A pastoral visit in South London followed by a funeral in Sussex gave the opportunity for visits en route to the Dulwich Picture Gallery, Watts Gallery and Watts Chapel.

C.R.W. Nevinson, Stanley Spencer, Mark Gertler, Dora Carrington, David Bomberg and Paul Nash became some of the most well-known and distinctive British artists of the twentieth century. Students together at the Slade School of Art in London between 1908 and 1912, they formed part of what their esteemed drawing teacher Henry Tonks described as the school’s last ‘crisis of brilliance’. As their talents evolved they became Futurists, Vorticists and ‘Bloomsberries’, and befriended the leading writers and intellectuals of their day.

Nash, Nevinson, Spencer, Gertler, Carrington, Bomberg: A Crisis of Brilliance, 1908-1922 features over 70 original works by the group and explores the artists’ development culminating with a selection of their paintings made during and after the Great War of 1914-18 generating some of the most provoking visual records of that epochal event.

First opening its doors to the public in 1904, Watts Gallery is a purpose-built art gallery created for the display of works by the great Victorian artist George Frederic Watts OM RA (1817-1904). After a major restoration project, visitors can now experience the Watts Collection in the historic galleries displaying the original decorative schemes. Over one hundred paintings by G.F. Watts are on permanent display at Watts Gallery. Spanning a period of 70 years they include portraits, landscapes and his major symbolic works.

Designed and built by Mary Watts, the Watts Chapel is a unique fusion of art nouveau, Celtic, Romanesque and Egyptian influence with Mary's own original style. The Circle of Eternity with its intersecting Cross of Faith is from pre-historic times and symbolises the power of redeeming love stretching to the four quarters of the earth. The dome is traditionally seen as emblematic of heaven, the four panels on the exterior containing friezes symbolising the Spirit of Hope, the Spirit of Truth, the Spirit of Love and the Spirit of Light.

Watts Gallery is currently presenting the first major retrospective exhibition in more than 100 years of eminent Victorian artist, Frank Holl (1845 – 1888). Widely regarded in his own lifetime as a leading figure in social realist and portrait painting, Holl’s early death meant that the artist never fully received the acclaim his work merited. For the first time, this exhibition brings together around thirty of his major works to examine how, during his short career, the artist became a distinct and insightful voice in British painting.

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Kirsty MacColl - Days.

Hot topics in galleries

The latest edition of Art & Christianity (57) arrived in the post today. As well as my review of Daniel Siedell's God in the Gallery, it also features:

• Tina Beattie on the artistic vision of Fenwick Lawson;
• John Haldane and David Tremlett in conversation;
• Laura Moffatt on new art and architecture in Bloomsbury;
• Reviews of exhibitions in Brussels, Amsterdam and ‘Byzantium’ at the Royal Academy;
• Book reviews on G F Watts and Marc Chagall;
• Listings, information, editorial and more.

Religion and spirituality are once again hot topics in galleries around the world, as evidenced by Holy Inspiration, where top works from Amsterdam's Stedelijk collection reveal the diversity in artists’ religious experience, and Septiformis, an exhibition held at the Saint Michel and Gudula Cathedral in Brussels. The Editorial of Issue 57 muses on whether the phenomenon of such exhibitions represents "a continuing quest, in an increasingly fractured post-modern world, for spiritual values and meanings perceived as residing in, and even emanating from, the exhibited art works."

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Al Green - Jesus Is Waiting.