…. my new exhibition. It comes at a particularly suitable time in view of the ideas I’ve been sharing over the past few days about the possible links between my art and religious faith.
The title of the show is Set Apart: solitude and sacredness. The best way to explain what it is about is to tell how these works came to be made. Several years ago I went on a walking trip in the Picos de Europa region of northern Spain. Our arrival in the area coincided with a period of truly foul weather, and in order to fill a very wet day I decided to visit a monastery, indicated in the area. Going into the church there was quite a shock, in that everything seemed to be done to emphasise the perpetual distance between the ordinary believer and the specially sacred bits of the place. The visitor, invited into a “holy” place was then roughly informed of their separation from anything holy.
Leaving the building, I discovered an interpretation board telling visitors about a group of ancient hermitages scattered in the woods on the mountainside above the monastery. Having nothing better to do, I decided to explore these, and became fascinated by the idea that, in order to put oneself in touch with the sacred, it is necessary to shun the world. I started to think about this supposed link between solitude and the pursuit of the sacred, and began to collect reference material in the form of sketches and photographs. The entire experience was both interesting and moving (especially in that it culminated in my own “peak experience” near the top of the mountain).
When I got back to Britain I worked up the material into a series of fourteen images, executed in watercolour but with the addition of a little gold leaf. (Some of these are included elsewhere on the website.)
This set of pictures is the object of my new exhibition. It will be in the Unit 9 Gallery, which is part of the South Square Centre, in Thornton, Bradford (BD13 3LD). The preview is on 4 July, , from 7 until 9. The show runs until 27 July. The South Square Centre is open Tuesdays-Sundays, between 12 and 3, and is located on Thornton Rd., just beyond the New Inn. If you need more information: www.southsquarecentre.co.uk: info@southsquarecentre.co.uk.