Art project plans

As you can see above the backing panels for the Advent Art installation were built over the summer and on Tuesday the planning group measured up ready to order the mirrored perspex that will be fixed to them. We expect that to arrive next week following which work on the installation can begin in earnest.

On Wednesday John Brown and I met with Mark Lewis of the Faith & Image group to discuss ways of working together to deliver an ongoing programme of arts events that can be a part of the Barking Programme. We discussed ideas for exhibitions, study sessions on 'Public Art & Churches' and 'Seeing Salvation', the creation of a Church-based art trail in the Barking Episcopal Area and performances blending words, images and music.

As a taster of what may be to come, we have Visual Dialogue 2 and the Barking Art Project on the weekend of 3rd-5th October:

Visual Dialogue 2 is a group art exhibition arranged for the Patronal Festival of St John's Seven Kings from Friday 3rd to Sunday 5th October 2008. The exhibition will include established and local artists including Henry Shelton, Alan Stewart, Rodney Bailey, Bob, Dennis & Liz Keenan, Jonathan Evens, Doreen Gullett, Peggy Hull and others.

Henry Shelton has had a successful career as a designer and fine artist. He has received design commissions for clients such as the Science Museum, Borough Councils, private and corporate bodies and has works in Churches such as the Church of the Saviour, Chell Heath, St Andrew Holborn and All Saints Goodmayes. Henry will exhibit several of his most recent works and a Stations of the Cross that was exhibited in 2007 at York Minster.

Alan Stewart is a Church of England minister and a fine artist. He has exhibited previously at London Bible College, London Institute of Contemporary Christianity, and Intermission at St Saviours. In 2005 his painting Early one morning was dedicated by the Bishop of Barking for the Youth Chapel of St Margaret's Barking. His most recent project, Hertford stns: A stations of the cross for Hertford, was the subject of a feature article in the Church Times.

Rodney Bailey studied Design and Public Art at Chelsea College. His work is concerned with identity, communication, and having a visual dialogue with nature. He uses a variety of styles to execute his work and draws on his family background and childhood memories for ideas as well as his Buddhist practice for inspiration and guidance. Last year Rodney exhibited in Eye Play at the Bankside Gallery and the inaugural Visual Dialogue exhibition at St John's Seven Kings.

As part of Visual Dialogue 2 we also plan to be able to exhibit for the first time the art installation that will tour Redbridge churches during Advent 2008 and which was featured in the previous edition of the newsletter.

Visual Dialogue 2 begins with an opening night reception from 7.30pm on Friday 3rd October to which all are welcome. In addition to viewing the exhibition and refreshments, the evening with feature a public conversation between myself and several of the exhibiting artists. The exhibition will continue on Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th October from 10.00am to 4.00pm.

The Barking Art Project is an art workshop providing a great opportunity to spend some time thinking about abstract art and developing your creative side as much of the day will be spent in creating your own piece of art on a religious theme. We will provide artistic materials for you to come and explore this God given side to humanity. There will also be the opportunity to see the Visual Dialogue 2 art exhibition and the Advent Art installation. All are welcome.

The Art Project workshop will be held on Saturday 4th October from 11.00 am – 3.00 pm at St John’s Seven Kings. Full costs for the day are £10.00. Bookings can be made through Revd John Brown, The Barking Programme, St. Luke’s Vicarage, 1A Baxter Road, Ilford, Essex IG1 2HN. Tel: 0208 553-7606. Email: livingfaith@stluke-ilford.org.uk.

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Runrig - Edge Of The World.

Write to the PM about MDGs

The Bishop of Chelmsford has called attention to the millions of lives which depend on the promises made in the Millennium Development Goals.

He has urged the churches in Chelmsford diocese to write to the Prime Minister before he leaves for the meeting of the United Nations on September 25 to support him in pressing on the meeting the desire to keep those promises.

Speaking of the passion across the recent Lambeth Conference on the urgent necessity of meeting the Millennium Development Goals, the Bishop has said: “Time and again people from north and south would say that they were tired of having to argue about sex and the church when millions were dying because of our failure to act.”

Bishop John’s reflections on the 2008 Lambeth Conference can be read by clicking here. He concludes his reflections by writing:

"Throughout the conference people of every theological perspective talked about their love of Jesus, their desire to call the world into discipleship and obedient faith, and of their own commitment to a Gospel of welcome and hospitality for all. The church is not a sect for the likeminded but a community of faith, drawing people of every culture and context into a life of holy and life-giving love in Christ.

If Anglicanism is to mean anything in the 21st century, and if it is to make its contribution to the future of both church and world it must hold fast to this great tradition and to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ with all its deep demands upon what we stand for in this fragile 21st century world.

Thank you for your prayers for us throughout this Lambeth process. Your prayers have been answered and fresh opportunities put in front of us on the road ahead."

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Sounds Of Blackness - Optimisitic.

Mystic Masque

The following comes from the latest Image Update:

"The McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College will host an exclusive exhibition, Mystic Masque: Semblance and Reality in Georges Rouault, on view through December 7, 2008.

It marks the fiftieth anniversary of the 1958 death of the French Fauvist and Expressionist painter and printmaker, and aims to recover the artist for a new generation. The exhibition will comprise approximately 240 of Rouault's finest paintings, works on paper and stained glass -many never before displayed in North America.

Focusing on meanings preserved in the French word "masque," the exhibition explores the many outward "masks" Rouault loved to paint--those of circus players, prostitutes and judicial figures, as well as the iconic sainte face (holy face) of Christ. Employing a second sense of "masque," the exhibition presents Rouault's representation of the human condition as a kind of "pageant" or "guising"--or as Balzac put it, a "human comedy."

Rouault's world is an often tragic comedy of errors, marked by uncertainty and misapprehension. Outward appearances misrepresent and betray deeper realities. This is true both for society's marginal figures and esteemed ones. Rouault succinctly summed up this vision in his several studies entitled (quoting Virgil's Aeneid), "Sunt Lacrymae Rerum"--"There are tears (of grief) at the very heart of things." Schloesser explains: "Such dark reflections are redeemed for Rouault by the human masque's qualifier -"mystic" - which points to the centrality of Christian iconography for the artist."

Arranged chronologically, the exhibition seeks to demonstrate that Rouault's religious realism as it developed was far removed from any conventional piety. Rouault's human comedy is simultaneously a divine comedy; it is a masque - but one that is ultimately mystic."

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Sufjan Stevens - John Wayne Gacy Jr.

Talk about toilets

Today tearfund are launching their new campaign on Water and Sanitation which aims to mobilise the church to help bring sanitation and water to all. Over the next few years they hope we'll join in helping 'justice flow like a river'.

Right now, over a third of the world is still waiting for somewhere safe and decent to go to the loo. While we sit comfortably, millions are suffering needlessly from illnesses caused by poor sanitation.

Later this month, our Secretary of State for International Development, Douglas Alexander MP will be heading out to the United Nations in New York to take part in a crucial meeting looking at progress on the Millennium Development Goals. Water and Sanitation are central to progress on many other issues like child health and education, but too often they have been overlooked, so we can take action to help change that.

Please write to Douglas Alexander urgently to ensure that taps and toilets are talked about. Click here for a template letter. If you want to know more about the issues surrounding the campaign, then click here, while the latest prayer points for the campaign can be found by clicking here.

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Aradhna - Music and Meaning.

Redbridge Cabinet & the public!!!

Tonight I had my first experience of speaking publicly at a Council Cabinet meeting and a very surreal experience it was too with one local resident being roundly rebuked by the Deputy Leader of Council and most items on a lengthy agenda being rubber-stamped by Cabinet members without discussion in approximately 10 minutes following the public input session. That's democracy for you!

Anyway, for what it's worth, this is what I had to say in the two minutes I was allocated:

"Seven Kings is the only part of the borough that does not have a static library within a one mile radius of residents. Despite this Seven Kings receives only 20% of the available mobile library time and only 0.3% of the total library service budget. I state these facts, which clearly illustrate the disadvantage endured by Seven Kings residents in relation to the rest of the borough’s residents, in order to encourage this cabinet to ensure that the deferred report, which it will receive from the Library Service at a future Cabinet meeting, and which will explore the possibility of a static library for Seven Kings is as genuinely comprehensive as possible and explores all possibilities for partnership with community organisations that could provide access to facilities and funding for a static library in Seven Kings. I call on the Cabinet to make this commitment as the only fair and equitable response to the lack of investment in library services for Seven Kings residents that has characterised the allocation of resources in previous years."

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Paul Weller - 22 Dreams.

Art on holiday

Jacob's Dream - Juginder Lamba (Waterhall Gallery of Modern Art)

Crucifix and figures by Peter Eugene Ball (Birmingham Cathedral)

Stone carving at Ruskin Mill (probably by Greg Tricker)

Risen Christ - Elizabeth Frink (Liverpool Cathedral)

Prophet - Ernst Blensdorf (Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral)

This year our summer holiday, which took in Greenbelt, was spent in Birmingham, Uley and Liverpool with family and friends. There was also the opportunity to see a great variety of works of art wherever we went.

I was fortunate that our time in Birmingham coincided with the Body & Soul exhibition by Juginder Lamba at the Waterhall Gallery of Modern Art. I posted on this exhibition at the time and have subsequently reviewed it for the Church Times. I also visited Birmingham Cathedral and enjoyed the pieces by Nicholas Mynheer and Peter Eugene Ball which were sensitively and effectively hung in side chapels.

From Birmingham, we went to Uley where we stayed for the Greenbelt Festival. My posts about Greenbelt and the visual art there can be found here, here, here and here. While in Uley I also looked for examples of work by Greg Tricker, eventually finding a stone carving of an angel at Ruskin Mill that I think was his and buying a copy of his book on St Francis of Assisi.

Finally, we went to Liverpool where a friend took us to both Cathedrals and to the Lady Level Art Gallery at Port Sunlight. While the architecture and interiors of both Cathedral's were generally impressive (the Metropolitan more so than the Anglican), the art in both, although appropriately placed and hung, failed to excite. At the Anglican Cathedral it was good to see funding actively being sought for contemporary art, yet the pieces purchased seemed run-of-mill examples from the artists selected which failed to add considerably to our appreciation of the parables and stories that served as subjects.

The exceptions were all sculptures; the Risen Christ by Elizabeth Frink at the Anglican Cathedral and the Jacob Epstein and Ernst Blensdorf works at the Metropolitan Cathedral. I was particularly interested to see the Blensdorf's having seen a retrospective exhibition of his work some year's ago at St John's Glastonbury which houses two monumental works by Blensdorf; Resurrection Christ and Madonna with Child. Also of interest was the sculpture in Hope Street by Stephen Broadbent of David Sheppard and Derek Worlock.

The Lady Lever Art Gallery at Port Sunlight was founded by William Hesketh Lever and is dedicated to the memory of his wife Elizabeth. The gallery contains the best of his personal art collection and a wonderful collection it is too, containing a large number of major Pre-Raphaelite works in particular. The best of these are Holman Hunt's The Scapegoat and May Morning on Magdalen Tower.

Lever said, at the opening of the Gallery in December 1922:

"Art has always been to me a stimulating influence; it has always taught me without upbraiding me; elevated me without humbling me; and appealed to me because of the fact that only the best and truest in art survives... Art can be to everyone an inspiration. It is within the reach of all of us..."

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Larry Norman - Be Careful What You Sign.

Windows on the world (17)

Birmingham, 2008

Here is a brief reminder of the thinking behind the 'Windows on the world' series:

As each of us view life from our own perspective, each photograph in this series features a foreground object providing a frame for what can be viewed beyond. As there is always something beyond our immediate frame of reference, each photograph in this series features something that can be glimpsed beyond the foreground image. By framing what is beyond, the photograph acts as a window on a part of our world and at the same time signals the presence of the beyond, thereby also acting as a window onto the divine in a way the way similar to that achieved by icons.

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Faithless - I Want More.