Confused, obtuse, tangled, vacuous, fruitless and one of the most frustrating shows I have ever been to. Jutta Koether exhibits recent work in a display hosted by Arnolfini, Bristol (until 7th July), having toured from Dundee Contemporary Arts earlier in the year. Called Seasons and Sacraments, the work draws inspiration from paintings of the same […]
Jutta Koether ‘Seasons and Sacraments’ Read More »
The word of the Lord came to me: “Daughter of man, take up a lament concerning England. Say to England, situated on an island in the sea, home of a glorious football team known to all peoples, ‘This is what FIFA says: You say, O England,“I am undefeated in victory.”Your domain was on the emerald
Lament for England (in the style of Ezekiel 27) Read More »
Purpose and contrivance lurks behind all that realism… The key piece here, shown high up on the wall, features a man in dark glasses floating on a lilo. He’s wearing blue bermudas and his skin is shiny with suntan oil. Like the giant couple upstairs, he seems to be on holiday, and ought to be
Ron Mueck’s biblical overtones Read More »
On until 6th May, Bath Abbey is hosting 7 works by contemporary artists under the heading ‘Odyssey: A Long Journey in Which Many Things Happen’. 7 pieces, on paper, doesn’t quite seem to add up to an odyssey, but surprisingly, such is their thoughtful placement in and interconnection with the abbey’s spaces that it feels
Bath Abbey’s Odyssey into art Read More »
Nearly ten years on from when I first made this panorama, it pops up on display at Widecombe Church on Dartmoor. An interested viewer took the trouble to find out who the artist was, and got in touch (thank you DB!). It perhaps says a lot about how photographic displays are perceived in a church/tourist
Panorama revisited and revised Read More »
It feels slightly odd marking this post in my ‘research’ category, but the photograph is such a departure point for so many thoughts, that I can’t help but mull it over: Up to the point of climbing on the hospital bed for the first scan, the knowledge of pregnancy is somewhere between an abstract mark
The shock of the new Read More »
Missionary photography is outside the main interest of my research by virtue of its departure from biblical representation. However, it is undoubtedly a significant aspect of photography made and published in the name of religious interest, from its first occurrence in the mid-nineteenth century, up to the present day. There are certainly instances of biblical
Early missionary photography Read More »
Back from a trip to Germany, having made the Gernsheim exhibition at the REM in Mannheim the primary stopping point, I found myself popping in to the MMK in Frankfurt before flying home. Here, Rineke Dijkstra has been given free rein of the entire jumpy triangulated space and its contents, to produce a solo show
Rineke Dijkstra at the MMK, Frankfurt Read More »
Ash Wednesday is a day of confronting our mortality through the symbol of ashes, beginning to strip away our comforts, and embarking on the archetypal journey into the desert that is an essential part of conversion. Conversion is the process of discovering that God is always much bigger than we imagined and that our own
Ash and dust the winter burial, Lent the spring Read More »
Commissioned for Trinity College Chapel, Bristol, in 2010, this 2.5m-wide print hung for a term in the apse of the chapel, at a time when students were studying aspects of eco-theology. Below is the transcript of my presentation of the piece at the time: The title of this piece is a quote from the NRSV
‘See, I am making all things new’ Read More »
