Exhibition - 'Gift'

Classical, modern and contemporary art and architecture beautifully combine for commission4mission’s third exhibition in the setting of St Stephen Walbrook.

‘Gift’ anticipates the traditional season of giving associated with the Christian festival of Christmas, but is intended as a broad theme open to wider interpretation. c4m artists taking part will showcase their individual engagements with the theme.

Artists exhibiting include Ally Ashworth, Hayley Bowen, Christopher Clack,Valerie Dean, Jonathan Evens, Rob Floyd, Maurizio Galia, John Gentry, Clorinda Goodman, Tim Harrold, Alan Hitching, Anthony Hodgson, Jean Lamb, Mark Lewis, David Millidge, Janet Roberts, Henry Shelton and Peter Webb.



Anita Collier will be showing work in the ‘Gift’ exhibition as a guest artist. The work she will be showing includes her ‘The Gift’ sculpture as a bronze. We first encountered Anita and her work through the Run with the Fire project, when she used the resources to run a community art exhibition and creative workshops.

Anita says: ‘The inspiration for my paintings range from what catches my attention in the world around me, to what captures my inner world in the form of a picture, idea or emotion. I then try to faithfully create from this connected place… so my work is often narrative and inspired by beauty, offering glimpses of another world that whispers to the heart.

I have also learnt that the process of painting with all its initial excitement, hopes, frustrations and delights, is of equal value as the final outcome. An opportunity to reflect and slow down from life’s other demands – time invested into what’s important, as well as what is urgent. This helps me appreciate and celebrate the preciousness of life. Maybe my paintings will go some way toward doing the same for you. I hope you find them uplifting and thought provoking, encouraging you to stop, look, and listen to your own heart and the world around.’

A gift of 10 per cent of the proceeds from sales will be donated to the charity Oasis. commission4mission has made Oasis our charity of choice meaning that charitable giving will be exclusively to Oasis for the time being.

The exhibition is open from Monday 28th September to Friday 8th October (10.00am – 4.00pm, Monday – Friday).

The launch and evening reception will be held on 28th September (6.30pm), preceded by our AGM (5.30pm). All are welcome.

During the launch and evening reception, Rob Floyd will speak about making the Stations of the Cross cycle for Manchester Cathedral and Stations of the Resurrection cycle for Liverpool Cathedral. Rev. Rachel Mann, Poet in Residence at Manchester Cathedral says, “I heartily recommend that if you want to understand a little more about the applications of the word ‘Art’ in our language, spend time in communion with Rob Floyd’s paintings. You will be rewarded.”

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Leonard Cohen and The Webb Sisters - If it Be Your Will.

Windows on the world (358)

Greenwich, 2015

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George Harrison - All Things Must Pass.

Update: Sophia Hub Redbridge

Ros Southern writes:

'Hi there, quite a lot of news this week:

Enterprise club this week is Wednesday evening with Ola Asgill on 'dont take business premises and other ways to keep costs down!' Click here for info

Guest blog by Mr Kinder a new children's entertainer start-up - read all about it! Can you find him opportunties?

The long awaited launch of the Redbridge Business Hub is 7th October. Read about it here

Advance notice of the enterprise club on Tuesday 6th October in the evening and review of last session with Kalpna Patel. A practical and lively workshop. Click here for info

On Tuesday 12.30-2.30 it's a co-working space at St Johns Church

Funding info for young entrepreneurs and a guest blog by Ola Kanu of Redbridge CVS on funding opportunities for not for profit businesses and community groups click here

Advance notice of the Chamber networking breakfast on 29th September - worth attending, open to start-ups. click here

Timebank swap of the week - Peter builds Theo's flat pack click here for info

We had a fabulous enteprise club this week with Fiona Flaherty - write up will be next week.

Oh and if you are thinking of employing someone and want to go on tele, read Geoff Hill's blog.

Next week, news of a gardening business looking to expand.

Have a good weekend,

Ros Southern

Coordinator, Sophia Hubs Seven Kings'

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Paul Simon - Something So Right.

Living with Dementia

On Tuesday, at St Martin-in-the-Fields, we continued our exploration of the experience of dementia and faith, through the insight of lived experience and theological reflection, as we looked at how our church life and worship might grow in a more dementia-friendly way. We were helped enormously in doing so by Clive Wright, David Warbrick and Sister Margaret.

David Warbrick said: "I was seeing, pared down, the very fabric of faith: imagination, analogy, metaphor, improvisation, musicality of speech, the power of words to evoke rather than confine and control. In his dementia, Dad laid bare the workings of the equipment God has given human beings for prayer. Half an hour in his real-yet-imaginary world burnished my vision of the world outside. The slowness and sense of presence made me see the exquisite delicacy of facial expressions and listen to intonation as much as to words, so something shifted in me. Just as his paintings have made me stop and behold rather than merely look at the world, maybe in his childlike dementia he has offered me a gift of perception I need to receive precisely now if I am to stay in touch with the kingdom of heaven during this exciting, potentially fruitful but also perhaps dangerously self-important, busily distracted decade of my life."

Several people spoke a sense of hope as a result of the idea developed by John Polkinghorne that "the immensely complex ‘information-bearing pattern’ (memories, character, etc) carried at any one time by the matter of my body ... is the soul and, though it will dissolve with the decay of my body, it is a perfectly sensible hope that the faithful God will not allow it to be lost but will preserve it in the divine memory in order to restore its embodiment in the great divine act of resurrection."

Also of particular interest was the thought that it is our earliest memories which are the last to fade. This is an additional reason for seeking to ensure that children have positive experiences in their childhood, as those memories may well be the place that they inhabit again at the end of their lives.

These are just some points of particular note for me from an evening which was full of value for those who came. Much discussion about dementia is to do with increasing understanding and thinking about the small things that we can do to make a difference to people affected by dementia in our community. That is deeply valuable but this evening took the discussion in very different directions which confronted some of the very real questions and challenges that the experience of living with dementia raises.

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R.E.M. - Talk About The Passion.

Don't Worry, Be Happy

The first sermon preached by Sally Muggeridge at St Stephen Walbrook can be heard on the London Internet Church website. Entitled 'Don't worry, be happy', Sally explored Jesus' teaching about anxiety from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6. 25 - 34).

The photos of Sally's ordination are from www.lacdao.com.

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Bobby McFerrin - Don't Worry, Be Happy.

Sabbatical art pilgrimage: Latest ArtWay report

My latest Church of the Month report for ArtWay focuses on St. Andrew Bobola Polish RC Church. 'The Church of St. Andrew Bobola, Shepherd’s Bush, is one of London’s hidden gems. St. Andrew Bobola was a Polish Jesuit missionary and martyr, known as the Apostle of Lithuania, and this Roman Catholic Church dedicated to him opened in 1961 in a former Presbyterian Church building that has been extensively restored as a living memorial to Poles who died during World War II. The church holds the main shrine in Britain to the dead of Katyn, the 1940 massacre of thousands of Polish officers by the Soviet secret police.'

This Church of the Month report follows on from others about Aylesford Priory, Canterbury Cathedral, Chapel of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, Hem, Chelmsford Cathedral, Lumen, Notre Dame du Léman, Notre-Dame de Toute Grâce, Plateau d’Assy, Romont, Sint Martinuskerk Latem, St Aidan of Lindisfarne, St Alban Romford and St Mary the Virgin, Downe, as well as earlier reports of visits to sites associated with Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, Antoni Gaudi and Henri Matisse.

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Morton Harket - Brother.

Exhibitions update

An exhibition of contemporary watercolour painting, featuring 90 works by 80 artists, is now on show at the Mall Galleries, London until Saturday 19 September.

Visiting information: 14 – 19 September 2015. Mall Galleries, The Mall, London SW1. Daily, 10am – 5pm. Admission free. www.mallgalleries.org.uk.

The London exhibition will be followed by The Smith & Williamson Tour to venues across the UK, including Castle Fine Art, Birmingham (10 – 18 October 2015) and Guildford House Gallery, Guildford (14 November 2015 – 2 January 2016).

I visited the exhibition yesterday with Zi Ling who has two works in the show. Zi creates portraits or explorations of relationships by working from photographs with which she feels an intuitive connection. The result, in the case of her portrait Jonathan, is a visceral, expressive image which is among the most affecting in the show.

Tomorrow I will be at The Lovely Gallery in Sydenham for the Private View of Exuberant Flourishing by Clive Sheldon. 

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Rickie Lee Jones - Jimmy Choos.