Welcome to Truro Cathedral and this exhibition Second Nature which we are very pleased to host in collaboration with Vitreous Contemporary Art and we are very grateful to the artists for what they have provided..
Eat the eyes of Christ. So said a Christian mystical theologian called St. Maximus the Confessor. In this very physical imagery he meant among many things to see and feel creation as a spiritual thing and how our physical spiritual and cultural future is profoundly bound up with it. In other words how Christ sees it and us, full of spiritual life and potential.
This year the Cathedral has been focussing very much on climate change and the spiritual values that need to change so that we treat our planet as sacred space. We realised that a collaboration between artists and cathedral would challenge them in their creativity and challenge those of us who visit, care for and worship in the cathedral to look and feel these things more deeply through this particular art in this sacred space.
We hope the many people who visit the cathedral as well as worshippers will be taken on a different inner journey and are open to what they see; ask questions and be questioned by the works themselves. As we experience these works of art our hope is that we will be opened to the wonder and beauty of creation, opened to affirmation ourselves as persons of beauty created by God and opened to the judgement of creation and through it the judgement of God as we watch it suffering from our human greed and lack of attention.
No doubt some will dismiss art in this radical form others will be delighted and intrigued. Cathedrals as places of worship should be alert to the movement of the Spirit wherever he is creating and inspiring. Historically he has often nurtured and challenged human beings through artists and their art.
As we journey around the Cathedral experiencing the exhibition it will take time and attention, slowing down and looking in unaccustomed places, deep down within, high up and beyond, past, present and future. Our prayer is that the Holy Spirit help us all, “eat the eyes of Christ”.
Canon Philip Lambert, Truro Cathedral. |
