half term,
quick trip to the big smoke to try and check out Bill Viola's Martyrs exhibit.
I turn up never having been in this part of the city before.
City proper.
Where was all the bustle.
Famous church. Has it's own cafe and loos.
So I was a bit surprised and sheepish when I was told it was services today only as it was Ash Wednesday and the exhibits were closed.
I was handed a leaflet in several languages telling me what Ash wednesday meant. I can't remember what it said but I remember the smell,
Smells and bells. The joke about high church.
it smelt like the all saints church in bristol that always seems open, empty, quiet and a refuge. It's windows were designed by artist John Piper for the modern repairs to it after it was half-decimated by a german bomb.
It always smells strongly of incense. And age.
The windows are dark blue, it's like sitting in an underwater cave. There's a comforting surrealness to the gloom. Boiled sweet bold primary coloured windows at the front but mainly a cool tint of blue to the interior from the vast window that's blue.
Except there's no tinkling sound or waves just the strange odd sound like water running down the side of a building. It's the noise of the fibreglass windows creaking every so subtly and eerily.....
Anyway, I'm walking into St Pauls, thinking of home and incense and All Saints church.
It's nearly noon and the sun is streaming in through the southern windows facing the thames. The rays struggle through the smoke and they're isolated and split by the leaded windows. It's absolutely breathtaking.
I'd read that frankinsense is used in churches as it slow down your breathing. Could be new age nonsense.
But it feels like you can't get enough of breathing in the stuff and then there's these windows making visible light rays. Clever stuff. See here the light we preach to you each week.
I'm gobsmacked and am itching to get my camera out my pocket but know i can't.
The copula is vast and high and tastefully guilded. Walls dove grey stone,solid columns, no messing, this place isn't going anywhere over time. I inch towards the brightest area, seats are lined up in a circle and hanging in the middle, perfectly just above head height, dense and obvious enough to obscure the pulpit is a perfect cloud. Tears prick, hands clench, the overriding annoying modern urge to take a photo of everything. Recording something for posterity that makes you feel connected. Then you will always have it with you when the feeling drains away along with your energy and sense of humour.
I sinned that day and here it is.
But hang on a sec, that looks familiar. Is life imitating art after all:
Berndnaut Smilde's website
It got me thinking about the age old question of what art is for.
Just like we cut flowers to bring them indoors to die and admire them. There's enough mad beautiful stuff in nature without chucking a whole lot of ego, intellect and nostalgia out there.
Creativity might have made us the wheel, craft might have wiled away some hours when the woolly mammoths weren't trying to eat us for tea. But those preocupations are long gone now. Why do we need it now? do we need it more than ever? do i like those photos of clouds in rooms more than I would like the experience myself. Am I so bloody jaded and removed that an image is better than a feeling.
I mean look at the windows in the second one. I just opened iphoto and it randomly jumped to photos I took in paris in 2010 on the foundation trip. thinking about the point and place of the viewer as it's something i've been reading up on from Olafur Eliassons work which is about phenomenology...try saying that after a couple of beers.
No comments:
Post a Comment