It's been a busy week on the commission4mission webpage beginning with a post on the Art in Religious Spaces consultation which we attended midweek at the Wallspace Gallery. Then there was a post of an article about commission4 mission that was published in the Veritasse Artisan's newsletter and two posts of photos and reports from our Art Installation workshop at the 'Fun in the Park' event for Barkingside.
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Delirious? - Majesty (Here I Am).
Saturday, 13 June 2009
Friday, 12 June 2009
London Borough's Faiths Network
London Borough's Faiths Network (LBFN) is an informal network which links people who are actively engaged at the interface of London's faith communities and borough-level statutory bodies.
If you are responsible for engaging local religious groups on behalf of a local authority or other public sector body in London or if you are part of a local faith community or multi-faith group in London which is consulted by borough-based statutory bodies (eg borough council, police, health services), then this network is for you.
The network usually meets two or three times each year, sharing news and good practice from across Greater London. LBFN has just developed its own website with lots of useful information and links. To check it out click here.
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The Low Anthem - Cage the Songbird.
If you are responsible for engaging local religious groups on behalf of a local authority or other public sector body in London or if you are part of a local faith community or multi-faith group in London which is consulted by borough-based statutory bodies (eg borough council, police, health services), then this network is for you.
The network usually meets two or three times each year, sharing news and good practice from across Greater London. LBFN has just developed its own website with lots of useful information and links. To check it out click here.
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The Low Anthem - Cage the Songbird.
Contemporary Social Evils
This comes from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation:
Out now, a new book - Contemporary Social Evils - demonstrates the public hunger for a new way of living and general unease about how greed, consumerism and individualism have pervaded our way of life. The book was formally launched yesterday in central London and a podcast of the event is now available to download.
The book brings together the findings from a major consultation with leading thinkers, commentators, activists and members of the public, led by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. It summarises the findings so far, including new research with disadvantaged groups, and looks forward to a post-recession future. Contributors range across the political spectrum, from AC Grayling and Ferdinand Mount to Julia Neuberger, Matthew Taylor and Anthony Browne.
"This is a brave exploration of some of the fundamental assumptions around values and attitudes that we hold, written at an important moment. I commend this timely, intelligent and challenging book". (Clare Tickell, Chief Executive, Action for Children)
"A splendid series of thought-provoking studies on the social evils of our time, blessedly free of nostalgia, an essential contribution to a much-needed national debate on the society we seek to make for the sake of those who will come after us." (Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks)
For more information on the JRFs Social Evils project go to www.jrf.org.uk/socialevils.
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Broken Records - Until The Earth Begins To Part.
Out now, a new book - Contemporary Social Evils - demonstrates the public hunger for a new way of living and general unease about how greed, consumerism and individualism have pervaded our way of life. The book was formally launched yesterday in central London and a podcast of the event is now available to download.
The book brings together the findings from a major consultation with leading thinkers, commentators, activists and members of the public, led by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. It summarises the findings so far, including new research with disadvantaged groups, and looks forward to a post-recession future. Contributors range across the political spectrum, from AC Grayling and Ferdinand Mount to Julia Neuberger, Matthew Taylor and Anthony Browne.
"This is a brave exploration of some of the fundamental assumptions around values and attitudes that we hold, written at an important moment. I commend this timely, intelligent and challenging book". (Clare Tickell, Chief Executive, Action for Children)
"A splendid series of thought-provoking studies on the social evils of our time, blessedly free of nostalgia, an essential contribution to a much-needed national debate on the society we seek to make for the sake of those who will come after us." (Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks)
For more information on the JRFs Social Evils project go to www.jrf.org.uk/socialevils.
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Broken Records - Until The Earth Begins To Part.
Thursday, 11 June 2009
Kyrie
Kyrie, Tim Cunningham, Revival Press
To have written a volume of poetry that, by being based on Church furniture, festivals and liturgy (albeit the Roman Catholicism of his Limerick upbringing) will inevitably remind readers of George Herbert’s The Temple, reveals Tim Cunningham as a poet of high ambition.
Kyrie, with the sharpness of its form and insights and the lyricism of its tone and humour is ample reward for such ambition. Cunningham has been called the poet of good endings and his apposite phrases serve to illuminate the everyday encounters which characterise his poetry.
We meet Father Pat who “hit the introit like a sprinter” and could say the weekday mass in fifteen minutes flat. At his funeral, the mourners agree that he was also “slow to judge, quick to compassion.” An elderly lady blossoms through the Parish’s mystery tours before beginning a different mystery tour by ambulance with Murillo’s Madonna safe inside her purse.
The title poem is a confession of our lack of insight and faith including: "For not walking on water when all / It needed was the buoyancy of faith, / Kyrie eleison." ‘Pater Noster’ meanwhile explores his relationship with his Grandfather as an analogy for relationship with God before concluding: "I would jump up on the bar / Of his old Raleigh any day / And listen to his stories / While he pedalled all the way / To an eternal paradise / That I already know by analogy."
Analogy is the clue to Cunningham’s experience of faith. It is in the connections between ordinary existence and the Christ event that faith becomes real. A friend “a mere unlucky Thirteen years” collapses at play, dies and is lifted up across a wall into the garden that becomes the parent’s Gethsemene, the wall shaping their pieta. The statue of the Virgin “looks down at the girl stanching tiny / Dams of tears, the girl whose secret was not / Whispered by an angel in her ear.”
The final poem finds Cunningham mute in a church that, apart from God and he, is empty. He is on hold, his turn missed at the exchange, but, he reasons, God will perhaps call him back, after all God has his number. The wry humour of Cunningham’s experience and verse reveals faith.
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Taize - Kyrie Eleison.
To have written a volume of poetry that, by being based on Church furniture, festivals and liturgy (albeit the Roman Catholicism of his Limerick upbringing) will inevitably remind readers of George Herbert’s The Temple, reveals Tim Cunningham as a poet of high ambition.
Kyrie, with the sharpness of its form and insights and the lyricism of its tone and humour is ample reward for such ambition. Cunningham has been called the poet of good endings and his apposite phrases serve to illuminate the everyday encounters which characterise his poetry.
We meet Father Pat who “hit the introit like a sprinter” and could say the weekday mass in fifteen minutes flat. At his funeral, the mourners agree that he was also “slow to judge, quick to compassion.” An elderly lady blossoms through the Parish’s mystery tours before beginning a different mystery tour by ambulance with Murillo’s Madonna safe inside her purse.
The title poem is a confession of our lack of insight and faith including: "For not walking on water when all / It needed was the buoyancy of faith, / Kyrie eleison." ‘Pater Noster’ meanwhile explores his relationship with his Grandfather as an analogy for relationship with God before concluding: "I would jump up on the bar / Of his old Raleigh any day / And listen to his stories / While he pedalled all the way / To an eternal paradise / That I already know by analogy."
Analogy is the clue to Cunningham’s experience of faith. It is in the connections between ordinary existence and the Christ event that faith becomes real. A friend “a mere unlucky Thirteen years” collapses at play, dies and is lifted up across a wall into the garden that becomes the parent’s Gethsemene, the wall shaping their pieta. The statue of the Virgin “looks down at the girl stanching tiny / Dams of tears, the girl whose secret was not / Whispered by an angel in her ear.”
The final poem finds Cunningham mute in a church that, apart from God and he, is empty. He is on hold, his turn missed at the exchange, but, he reasons, God will perhaps call him back, after all God has his number. The wry humour of Cunningham’s experience and verse reveals faith.
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Taize - Kyrie Eleison.
Wednesday, 10 June 2009
Meditation - Anselm Kiefer's 'Palm Sunday'
Meditation on Anselm Kiefer’s Palm Sunday - Thursday 28th May 2009, Tate Modern
Dead diagonal
transecting space
dusty, dirty palm
bleached of life
red clay
ball of roots
leaves droop
and trail
once fertile
now fragile
creviced trunk
bridges root ball
and limp
foliage bush
two walls -
39 framed panels
stacked three panels high –
are backdrop
to the palm diagonal
desert landscapes
composed of leaves
and sand
hieratic bleached leaves
tangled twigs
discarded clothing
dead matter
constructing created
mindscapes for the soul
Vast vistas -
cracked clay
dry surfaces -
death and decay
sterility and stasis
worlds shattered
and broken
apocalyptic
thirsty lands
praying for water
39
and the installation
forming 40 -
40 desert days
and nights
demonic temptations
forming
repentance sermons
Where are
our roots?
Have we lost
our roots?
Are we
torn up
by our roots?
Is our world
sterile, shallow,
cracked, breaking,
dry, dusty,
diseased, dirty,
dead?
Words written
in sand –
“vater”
“psalmsonntag”
“domenica
belle palme” –
words written
in sand –
pregnant pause
transient scribing
before
pointed challenge
and rocks
falling from hands
onto sand
An event
containing
death and life
turning on
signs in sand
water in desert
life in death
restoration in ruins
An installation
containing
creative dryness
constructive discards
where dead
things live as
objects of reflection
where discards
are reimagined
recombined
reworked
recreated
from detritus
and decay
dust
and destruction
Palm Sunday -
a festival
containing its
own apocalypse
and apotheosis
a welcome
that become
a waylaying
a celebration
that became
a condemnation
a crucifixion
that became
a resurrection
Palms torn
from a living tree
are thrown
in the dust
as welcome
to be trodden
underfoot
and discarded
bleached
by the noonday
sun
these
discarded palms
gathered up
centuries later
for artistic
recreation
Is this
object
installation
and moment
of reflection
a pregnant
pause
a creative
sign in sand
a recreative
refashioning
reforming
from the
dry
discarded
and detritic
the sterile
stagnant
and static?
The Tate describe the Artist Rooms initiative as follows:
"ARTIST ROOMS is a collection of international contemporary art which has been created through one of the largest and most imaginative gifts of art ever made to museums in Britain. The gift was made by Anthony d'Offay in 2008, with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, The Art Fund and the Scottish and British Governments. ARTIST ROOMS is jointly owned and managed by National Galleries of Scotland and Tate on behalf of the nation. The guiding principle of ARTIST ROOMS is the concept of individual rooms devoted to particular artists. Many of the rooms were conceived as specific installations by the artists themselves and have been assembled so that the work of important contemporary artists can be seen and appreciated in depth."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Heard - Rise From The Ruins.
Dead diagonal
transecting space
dusty, dirty palm
bleached of life
red clay
ball of roots
leaves droop
and trail
once fertile
now fragile
creviced trunk
bridges root ball
and limp
foliage bush
two walls -
39 framed panels
stacked three panels high –
are backdrop
to the palm diagonal
desert landscapes
composed of leaves
and sand
hieratic bleached leaves
tangled twigs
discarded clothing
dead matter
constructing created
mindscapes for the soul
Vast vistas -
cracked clay
dry surfaces -
death and decay
sterility and stasis
worlds shattered
and broken
apocalyptic
thirsty lands
praying for water
39
and the installation
forming 40 -
40 desert days
and nights
demonic temptations
forming
repentance sermons
Where are
our roots?
Have we lost
our roots?
Are we
torn up
by our roots?
Is our world
sterile, shallow,
cracked, breaking,
dry, dusty,
diseased, dirty,
dead?
Words written
in sand –
“vater”
“psalmsonntag”
“domenica
belle palme” –
words written
in sand –
pregnant pause
transient scribing
before
pointed challenge
and rocks
falling from hands
onto sand
An event
containing
death and life
turning on
signs in sand
water in desert
life in death
restoration in ruins
An installation
containing
creative dryness
constructive discards
where dead
things live as
objects of reflection
where discards
are reimagined
recombined
reworked
recreated
from detritus
and decay
dust
and destruction
Palm Sunday -
a festival
containing its
own apocalypse
and apotheosis
a welcome
that become
a waylaying
a celebration
that became
a condemnation
a crucifixion
that became
a resurrection
Palms torn
from a living tree
are thrown
in the dust
as welcome
to be trodden
underfoot
and discarded
bleached
by the noonday
sun
these
discarded palms
gathered up
centuries later
for artistic
recreation
Is this
object
installation
and moment
of reflection
a pregnant
pause
a creative
sign in sand
a recreative
refashioning
reforming
from the
dry
discarded
and detritic
the sterile
stagnant
and static?
The Tate describe the Artist Rooms initiative as follows:
"ARTIST ROOMS is a collection of international contemporary art which has been created through one of the largest and most imaginative gifts of art ever made to museums in Britain. The gift was made by Anthony d'Offay in 2008, with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, The Art Fund and the Scottish and British Governments. ARTIST ROOMS is jointly owned and managed by National Galleries of Scotland and Tate on behalf of the nation. The guiding principle of ARTIST ROOMS is the concept of individual rooms devoted to particular artists. Many of the rooms were conceived as specific installations by the artists themselves and have been assembled so that the work of important contemporary artists can be seen and appreciated in depth."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Heard - Rise From The Ruins.
Movers & Shakers (2)
'What is vitally important is that we do encourage a national strategy to get out and ride bikes. It is a great way to keep fit, a great way to have a good time. It is vital that the Government gives a lead for a national policy. I do intend to speak to the Secretary of State for Transport. It is vital to have a strategy to help cycling and actually to have resources to put things in place like this brilliant facility that we have in my constituency in the London Borough of Redbridge.You have my full support. I do intend coming back here. I hope that you go from strength to strength and that more and more people cycle in Redbridge.' Lee Scott MP, Ilford North
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Athlete - Vehicles & Animals.
Tuesday, 9 June 2009
Windows on the world (57)
West Mersea, 2009
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U2 - One Tree Hill.
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