Exhibiting Faith (David Trigg)

Exhibiting Faith is a podcast about the intersection of art and faith, from art in sacred spaces to artists and curators engaged with issues of faith. In each episode, critic and art historian David Trigg welcomes a different guest for whom faith has played a significant role in their life and work.

Exhibiting Faith is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

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David Trigg speaks to curator and visual arts advisor Jacquiline Creswell, who for 12 years was the driving force behind Salisbury Cathedral’s pioneering visual arts programme.

Since 2009, she has organised more than 45 exhibitions in sacred spaces, presenting modern and contemporary works that reflect on our shared humanity, encourage spiritual responses, and demonstrate art’s power to transform and renew.

Raised in South Africa in a Jewish family, Creswell studied art and graphic design in Johannesburg, and practiced as a sculptor before the demands of motherhood intervened. Having moved to the UK, she returned to making art in the 2000s, working alongside two stonemasons who had worked at Salisbury Cathedral. Through this working relationship, and helping a friend with a fundraiser at the cathedral, she became enamoured with the awe-inspiring space, but it was seeing an exhibition of sculpted angel heads there in 2008 by artist Emily Young that really piqued her interest in the intersection of art and faith.

Jacquiline talks about how she started curating in sacred spaces and the challenges of placing modern and contemporary art in places of worship, how she takes risks as a curator and how her own faith has informed her work. She also discusses the ways in which art in churches and cathedrals can help people to connect with the things of faith and bring communities together, from Michael Pendry’s installation Les Colombes, presented in the aftermath of the Salisbury Novichok attacks, to Together We Rise at Chichester Cathedral, an exhibition by artists from the Royal Society of Sculptors programmed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic (until 6 September, 2022).

Artworks discussed in this episode can be viewed online via Jacquiline’s website: https://visualartsadvisor.org and on Instagram @exhibitingfaith

Learn more about Together We Rise: https://www.chichestercathedral.org.uk/together-we-rise

Follow @visualartsadvisor and @togetherwerise2022 on Instagram

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David Trigg speaks to Birmingham-based textile artist Farwa Moledina about her exhibition Women of Paradise at Ikon Gallery.

Raised in Dubai in a Muslim family, Farwa moved to the UK in 2010, where she studied at Birmingham School of Art. Since graduating in 2018, she has been making textile-based works, which, through the use of pattern and Islamic design principles, address themes of feminism and faith, and scrutinise the portrayal of Muslim women in the canon of western art. Her work aims to stimulate a more nuanced debate regarding female Muslim identity and the way in which Muslim women are viewed.

Farwa’s new textile work, Women of Paradise, is a response to the singular religious narratives that dominate western museums and galleries. It is a study of the four women promised paradise Islamic tradition: Aasiyah, the adoptive mother of Moses; Khadijah, the wife of the Prophet Muhammad and Fatimah their daughter, and Maryam the mother of Isa, otherwise known as Mary, the mother of Jesus. 

Conscious that galleries and museums rarely contain depictions of Mary outside of the Christian imagination, Farwa provides a different perspective on this figure, who is of important religious and cultural significance in Islamic countries.

In addition to her exhibition at Ikon Gallery, she discusses two earlier works: Thawra (2020), which focuses on revolutionary Muslim women and the erasure they have faced throughout history; and By Your Coming We Are Healed (2020), a work made during the first national Covid lockdown that focusses on Ramadan in the time of the pandemic.

Artworks discussed in this episode can be viewed online via Farwa’s website: www.farwamoledina.com and on Instagram @farwamoledina @exhibitingfaith

Learn more about Women of Paradise: https://www.ikon-gallery.org/exhibition/women-of-paradise

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David Trigg speaks to artist, writer and mentor Alastair Gordon about the Christian imagination and how art and faith intersect in his work.

Alastair’s meticulous paintings draw on the tradition of Quodlibet, a little known 17th-century genre of illusionistic painting, in which collections of everyday objects are depicted scattered across tabletops or pinned up on boards. Reimagining quodlibet for the 21st century, Alastair paints snapshots of the artist’s studio, where materials relating to the making of paintings are all rendered with exacting detail. In these works, still life mingles with landscape to address weightier concerns of truth, beauty, and faith.

As a writer, Alastair has reflected on the relationship between art and faith through several books, exploring from a Christian perspective what it looks like to work with integrity as an artist and religious believer. 

Alastair's work as a mentor has helped countless artists think clearly about how their personal faith connects with their work, bringing clarity, encouragement and challenge to believers working in the arts. 

Artworks discussed in this episode can be viewed online via Alastair’s website: www.alastairjohngordon.com and on Instagram @alastair_gordon @exhibitingfaith

Learn more about Alastair’s work with Morphé Arts: www.morphearts.org 

Alastair’s book, Why Art Matters, is available now, published by IVP: ivpbooks.com 

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David Trigg speaks to the London-based painter Matthew Krishanu, whose figurative paintings explore themes of childhood, religion and the legacies of colonialism. 

Matthew was raised in Bangladesh in the 1980s, a formative period which has inspired several bodies of work, from paintings based on his childhood adventures with his brother, to his Mission series addressing his father’s role as a priest in the church of Bangladesh, and his House of God paintings, which depict church buildings in the Bengal landscape.

Matthew’s paintings of religious meetings, ceremonies and churches are painted in a simple and abbreviated style with thin washes of paint and bold, assertive marks. Yet his uncomplicated aesthetic belies a complex web of historical and cultural undercurrents that serve to problematise his beguiling images. 

Matthew’s interest in making paintings about religion led to his Religious Workers series, created for the Southbank Centre’s Everyday Heroes exhibition in autumn 2020, which responded to the Covid-19 pandemic with a vivid outdoor celebration of key and frontline workers.

Whether addressing religion, the legacies of Western imperialism, or the history of religious art, his works resist polemics, instead inviting conversation and contemplation.

Artworks discussed in this episode can be viewed on Instagram @exhibitingfaith @matthewkrishanu and on Matthew’s website website: www.matthewkrishanu.com 

Matthew’s first monograph will be published by Anomie Publishing in spring 2023: www.anomie-publishing.com/matthew-krishanu/

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David Trigg speaks to Laura Moffatt, director of Art + Christianity, an organisation seeking to foster and explore the dialogue between art, Christianity and other religious traditions.

Since the 1990s, Art + Christianity has forged relationships with galleries, institutions and places of worship through projects, events, and publications. It also works to raise awareness of the rich heritage of modern and contemporary art in church buildings.

Laura studied Fine Art at the University of Newcastle and Arts Criticism at City, University of London. Before becoming director of Art + Christianity, she worked for Art Monthly and the Hoxton gallery, PEER. She is a member of The Diocesan Advisory Committee for the Care of Churches and sits on the Church Buildings Council, which advises on the care, conservation and development of church buildings.

Laura speaks about her work with Art + Christianity and takes us on a tour of London churches to visit a selection of modern and contemporary artworks that the organisation is documenting as part of its Ecclesiart project.

Artworks visited:
John Hayward, interior murals, St Michael & All Angels, London Fields
Rona Smith, North Elevation, Lumen United Reformed Church, Bloomsbury
Stephen Cox, Adam and Eve, St Luke's Church, Chelsea

Ecclesiart currently lists more than 80 permanent works of art in churches and cathedrals, reflecting the diversity of commissions and charting developments in ecclesiastical art and design.

Artworks discussed in this episode can be viewed on Instagram @exhibitingfaith and on the Art + Christianity website

If you've enjoyed this episode, please consider supporting the show.