jonnybaker

music is sacred

this room is in the vinyl factory reverb exhibition at 180 studios. take your shoes off - a sure sign this is holy ground. sit in quiet in what feels like a sacred space and an album takes centre stage to be played for everyone to listen to. music is spiritual or can be. my own experience is that i find music has played an important part in the soundtrack of my life. It can speak to me, inspire me, help me express emotion, touch me, put into words what i don't know how to, be a prayer, accompany a prayer. i loved it - so simple, one to do at grace at some point. it got me wondering what a playlist would be of spiritual tunes. i may come back to that...

GET interrupted

had fun yesterday at a screenprint workshop at print club london - a present from jen for christmas. i took a design from a forthcoming app on creativity which we are working on at GETsidetracked . i know i said it would be out last summer but we will get there. this image is from the prompt 'GET interrupted' - a key thing in the creative process. they came out wonderfully well - thanks to joel for the idea for this image and jon for drawing it. i wasn't expecting this but i now have a limited edition print run numbered 1-7 which feels very artist like!

homeless jesus

a sculpture by tim schmalz. this is in the middle of mayfair - could not be better placed! it is a really amazing sculpture, wonderfully made.

message to world leaders

wild fire

this week we celebrated cms pioneer students achievements graduating with a range of awards from durham university. i teach a module on worship and worked with students on that module to curate the celebration as part of the assesssment! they did an amazing job exploring the theme of the pioneer journey. it was in two parts. part 1 was a series of installations to interact with. part 2 was a fireside celebration. it was so joyful. it's amazing to work with pioneers - i love the way they see the world and seek to catalyse new things, new projects, new communities invariably with those at the edges of their communities. 

every year iain cotton, an artist and sculptor has created a gift representing the pioneer journey. this was actually the tenth iteration. each year is different and each tile is unique. i hope to find all ten and blog about them all at some point. this year's one was just perfect in so many ways. the image is of a chiseled journey which is incomplete. it's also an open circle - a place of gathering but in which others are welcome and out of which the life can spill outwards. at the heart is a fire - the fire of the great spirit which too breaks out of the circle. 

we also admitted several pioneers as lay workers in the church of england.

congratulation to all those who completed awards! 

synchronicity

i have several shows by uva. synchronicity was at 180 studios which is a wonderful setting for their work. i had seen a few of the pieces before. it's impressive and looks wonderful in the dark. we discussed afterwards how art is at its best when the ideas have something to get into that is below the surface. some of their work looks great but doesn't do that deep dive. i have added an album of a few photos - synchronicity.

portal

i really enjoyed marina abramovic's show at the royal academy. her performance art has really pushed the edges of interaction with audiences and indeed her own self.

one of the things that caught my attention were a list of rules that guide her practice. i often think the ay artists and pioneers think is very similar. this could easily be from a pioneer journal on how they might approach their practice!

red moon rising

i think i have been to more art in london in the last monthy than the rest of the year. it was great to see the latest turbine hall installation. i have loved seeing what people do in that space over the years.

halo

i called in to see halo, an installation at st stephens walbrook as part of the london design festival. a pendulum loops round henry moore's altar with a light that moves up and down completing loops. a long exposure photo creates the halo effect. above are ambient projections looking like the northern lights. it was well done. for what it's worth my own take was that it would be interesting to expand this project conceptually by exploring notions of the sacred elsewhere - locating the halo outside the church walls.

i took a video of halo in case you want to see the pendulum in real time as it were or get a sense of the ambient projections overhead.

barbie

all the buzz around barbie reminded me of this photo from a student graduate show back in 2007!

triptych

at the ealing lip photography group ray presented some triptychs and issued a challenge to thr group to have a go at producing some. this is one of my attempts using some abstract photos from lou baker's social scaffolding.

grenfell

grenfell by steve mcqueen is a moving powerful film on at the serpentine gallery. it is a remembering of the horror of the burnt tower. the opening sequence takes around 7.5 minutes, at least by my guess, slowly moving in from afar. it's bill viola like in its slow motion. and then in silence the charred building circled multiple times before coming to rest on a still that fills the screen. that's it. a lament, a memory, a needless tragedy. there's a good review of it here by adrian searle. everyone leaves in silence pausing to read the names of those whose lives were lost. 

resistance

i called in today with harvey kwiyani to the exhibition that is on at fulham palace on resistance. it's full title is the bishops of london, colonialism, transatlantic slavery and resistance. scroll down on the exhibition page to find info. fulham palace was the residence of the bishop of londion until 1973 which is the connection. i had not been there before. the fulham palace trust have been researching the link between the bishops of london and slavery. one of the outcomes is this inspired project which is curated/led by a poet adisa the verbaliser who worked with schools and community groups around it. the angle it takes, as well as being very informative (see for example this timeline), is to explore acts of spiritual and physical resistance that ultimately brought an end to the slave trade. do have a look at this page and click on the links on the right hand side which has loads of really interesting information and stories. it's no surprise of course to find that the research demonstrates historic involvement of the bishop of london and the church of england in colonialism and transatlantic slavery. 

the acts of resistance reminded me of the writing of michel de certeau in his book the practice of everyday life who shows how people resist strategies through what he calls tactics. 

we went on to the serpentine to see the grenfell movie by steve mcqueen but failed to do so because i hadn't thought to get tickets - doh! turns out it is full. so if you go to that book ahead. i hope to go back.

all this of course is very poignant and relevant as at cms we seek to work out what post colonial mission might be or mean or look like. harvey leads our african christianity programmes so is a good friend and colleague - it was great to hang out and talk about this stuff today.

julian opie vr exhibition

if you are in london anywhere near paddington swing by the lisson gallery and see the julian opie exhibtion. the main feature is a vr headset experience of a virtual exhibtion. it's pretty well done. i am a big fan of his work - just the simplicity of it. if you've got kids and are looking for easter holiday things to do for free then i think they'll love this. btw this photo is not the vr part of the exhibition!

another year another celebration!

pioneers graduating this year had the disruption of COVID and training being online for much of the journey. they have done amazingly well. what a gift for the church and locale to have people with energy, passion, imagination, wanting to be good news in their neighbourhoods, and growing new communities of disciples in the borderlands (as bishop lusa put it). we also admitted some lay pioneers into lay ministry in the church of england. i love what I do for a job and am so thankful to church mission society for being such a great community to hold this in. and for a brilliant team.

it is truly extraordinary and so encouraging to hear students say that this has changed their life (I assume they meant for the better!!!). if you are interested in imaginative mission, have ideas for starting new communities, enterprises whether in youth ministry, chaplaincy, new housing areas, your home, your parish, or any place else. if you are dissatisfied and want to do something about loneliness, poverty, injustice, the state of the planet, food, the disconnect with church, refugees, reclaiming the commons, inequality and so forth then jump on board .

every year at graduation pioneers are given a gift created by the wonderful iain cotton . Eech year is a different take on the idea of making a new path in a landscape. this one has a river flowing where the path has been made and a gold leaf, a sign of flourishing maybe? it’s also a riff on the scripture that was read of a river flowing and leaves of healing for the nations. it’s become an amazing series.

natalie has written a reflection on the graduation on the pioneer blog here

the book of veles and the lucky find

i couldn’t believe my luck when we stumbled upon an exhibition of the book of veles in the hague at the beeld and geluid museum. it is an absolutely wonderful project by jonas bendiksen who is a magnum photographer and was the inspirational spark for our trickster exhibition.

veles is a town in macedonia and caught his attention because it was a hub for fake news. there are some many layers that play with fake news in the project. veles is the name of a shapeshifting god. there was an old manuscript of a book of veles that did the rounds but that too proved to be fake. bendiksen taught himself to make avatars in lockdown and photographed empty landscapes in veles and added the characters tor the photos. he fed text on fake news in veles into an ai programme and the text in the book is generated by that artificial intelligence - it too is fake! when the book was published no questions were asked and nobody realised anything about it was fake. In fact it was very well received and he too part in a big festival in paris. shortly after that he wanted the truth to be uncovered so created, you guessed it, a fake account on facebook and twitter raising suspicions about his work until finally some cracks started to appear and then he published this interview with magnum where he reveals all. i have the book and love it.

the exhibition had a section on chloe, the fake twitter account holder, and it was amazing to see the responses to those tweets printed out.

and there was also a montage of the various avatars that jonas had created so you could see how they had been put into the photographs. one of my favourite tricks was the avatar of bears. the god veles shifted shape as a bear so I found that particularly amusing. Presumably readers of the book assumed that you might regularly see bears about town!

absolute genius! one of trickster’s ruses that we came up with for the exhibition was the lucky find so it felt very apt that finding the exhibition in the hague was indeed a lucky find.

after the apocalypse

it is always a delight to discover friends creative projects. i spotted on instagram a new collaboration between poet chris goan and illustrator si smith. chris penned a few books of poems and liturgies on proost, and si is probably best known for the wonderful 40 series of illustrations of christ's journey in the wilderness.

after the apocalypse is arranged in three sections - before, during and after written and drawn in and around the pandemic. you'll find yourself in the words and images - it's a landscape we all traversed. artists have a knack of being the kind of nerve endings of a culture or something - a sort of feeling their way on our behalf or something. the times we are living in have made it hard to feel genuinely hopeful but it does blend grief and sorrow with hope against the odds.

chis blogs at fragile tent and is someone who has really stuck with the blog format over the years and done an amazing job. you can see some illustrations from the book and poems if you scroll down - like i want to live on this post.

while i was looking to see what was there i really enjoyed chris' latest 4 posts which are explorations of theopoetics - spirituality through artful making. this is a link to the fourth - click on that and scroll down. well worth a read...

the book is available from seatree argyll - that's also the site for chris and michaela goan's creative projects working in pottery, words, wood. they both left jobs a few years back now to pursue a simpler life where they could explore their passions and creative interests and make a life from that. it seems to be going pretty well! 

trickster exhibtion open

it's been a hectic week! but it has been such fun to set up and see the trickster remakes this world exhibition as part of BEAT, ealing's local art trail. i'll add more photos and say a lot more about it in due course but if you are in ealing do visit - opening times are here.

it's not just photography - there are some installations and interventions too. joel loaned us his amazing flipdot board too which has various ruses scrolling across  it which looks amazing.

and thanks to jon birch for his coyote illustration which is popping up all over the place!

trickster remakes the world exhibition in ealing in september

i am taking part in a photography exhibition in ealing as part of BEAT - the wonderful ealing art trail. it's called trickster remakes this world. the local photography group i am part of is putting it on. it is inspired by the book trickster makes this world by lewis hyde. those of you who have followed the blog may remember this being something i have talked about before at the inspiration of nic hughes and kester brewin back in the day. i presented on trickster's ruses at greenbelt a long time back, so it's fun to make that connection again, this time in relation to photography. the details are that it is at 

the rickyard, walpole park

sat sept 10th and sun 11th 12-6pm
mon sept 12th to fri 16th 1-6pm
sat sept 17th 12-6pm
sun sept 18th 12-5pm

as well as photography there will be a few other interventions in and around the park.

if you've not come across trickster, he or she is a character like coyote (see earlier post!) in myths and stories of various cultures. trickster is a difficult character in sone ways - breaking rules, living in inbetween spaces, messing with what's sacred and so forth. but trickster also tends to be revered because they are seen to be critical to cultures changing when they gets stuck. during lockdown so many people said we can't go back to the way things were and yet where is the imagination for a different way or a new world? so it felt timely to open up an engagement with trickster and trickster's ruses. hyde's book explores the way some art and artists plays the role of trickster. each photographer got randomly assigned a ruse of trickster and the photographs will be their responses. hyde\'s book is not actually organised in ruses - they are simply phrases or ideas that i lifted from the book - i hope hyde would warm to the aproach. the spinning wheeel of ruses is here if you fancy having a go yourself!

 

maths, poetry and code

so proud of harry and joel (and matt and alex!) for their exhibition recreation at the pie factory in margate. i took some photos at the opening - an album is here. the exhibition is a playful mix of poetry meets maths and code. we made a family weekend of it celebrating harry's 30th!