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  • Added November 12th, 2010
  • Filed under 'All Sorts'
  • Viewed 2409 times

The Evolve Art Award

By Aelred Edmunds in All Sorts

Aelred considers the role of art in our spiritual lives.

At the moment I am involved in promoting a religious art project in Otago. So, when Ken asked me to write the article for this week, I decided to offer my thoughts on the role of art in religious/spiritual life.

You will be interested to know that the art mediums for this event include painting, photography, jewellery, wearable art, and ceramics. Contributors have been invited to express something of their personal perceptions of "spirituality." I am really pleased that such a wide range of mediums is available because paintings alone (like certain theological emphases alone) can sometimes become overpowering. I find that when I visit an art gallery where there is little but paintings I become literally exhausted. I find myself craving some different "textures - in other words, a variety of mediums.

The sacred dimensions of life demand an awesome variety of expressions - just as Christ demands a variety of expressions that can take in more than the historical Jesus (my focus in earlier articles). Also, as the sacred is approached, crude literalisms need to be allowed to fall away. Rich imagination must needs be given free reign. Actually, I have always been fascinated by the phenomenon wherein even some very creative and powerful artists feel that they need to reign-in, restrict, their imagination when the focus becomes specifically "religious." This may be seen in many works of the European Renaissance.

I am anticipating that artists submitting their works for the Evolve Art Award in Otago will not be reigning-in, and will reflect a variety of traditions within their own medium disciplines, and a variety of understandings of "God", "the sacred", and "the spiritual."

Finally, I think it is extraordinarily important to recognise that "The potential influence of artists on contemporary approaches to religion and spirituality is immense. Although artists seldom command regular audiences the way clergy do, their work is widely distributed through the mass media and in galleries, museums, bookstores, and retreat centres." (Robert Wuthnow on "The Way of the Artist.")

The art works submitted may be viewed 20th January - 1st February 2011 at the Dunedin Community Gallery, Princes Street, Dunedin. You will be meeting people who, in their works, have taken responsibility for their own spirituality.

Perhaps the Evolve Art Award will become an annual feature of the artistic life of Otago. We certainly hope so. Perhaps we will be seeing the beginnings of something like the Blake Prize for religious art in Australia.
-- Aelred Edmunds

First printed as a Connections article in the Parish Weekly Bulletin, November 14, 2010.