My father died on the 16th April. He had Parkinson’s, and was in a care home in Oxfordshire where, despite isolation, COVID-19 took away his breath. Parkinson’s took away other things, shading my last year with him in other ways: his frustration, his failing speech, his intent on leaving the wheelchair behind (but definitely not […]
In memory of Dr Tom Gledhill, my Dad Read More »
It’s 2020. I wonder if we can start the year with clear vision. If those of us playing with the meaningfulness of images and words can anticipate the colour cast of the next decade or two. Or consider whether we are even facing the right way? Sometimes I feel the disjunction of offering thoughts on
Future forecasts for art and religion by A+C contributors Read More »
I’m in endurance mode with George Steiner’s Real Presences (1989). What pitted, articulate, ranging, poetic depth he brings to present-day understandings of the arts. At my sense of it, he says we need a reckoning with the undisputed ‘life of meaning in the text, in music, in art’ (p.50) because our world is doing away
Overall winner and Photographer of the Year at this year’s Sony World Photography Awards is Alys Tomlinson for her series Ex-Voto. A British winner for the first time in ten years, Tomlinson presents a series of black and white photographs across the genres of portrait, landscape, and still life exploring the geography and legacies of
The perspective of pilgrimage at the Sony World Photography Awards Read More »
Coming up in the middle of June, I will be presenting a paper at the ‘Rethinking Early Photography’ conference in Lincoln. Below is my abstract for Let There Be Light: Theology and Spirituality in Early Photography: Largely absent from discourses on the development and context of early photography is an examination of the religious and
Let there be light! Read More »
I’m on a balancing line with these – a new series of 6 globes, each of a different habitat. Creation is beautiful and good, but also fractured and threatened. I can’t see where the resolution of the image should sit, both in terms of its meaning and its look. What role has sight in this
Habitat series, ‘Forest Globe’ work-in-progress Read More »
Has he retreated to the safer places for conventional religious art, like above an altar or in the carefully crafted designs of church kneelers? Is he buried somewhere in the easy appropriation of sign and symbol, or Biblical reference? Does he speak through artists’ attempts to reference the spiritual, even if they don’t know what
Where is God in contemporary art? Read More »
