Bible

Will artists have patrons in heaven?

Maundy Thursday in Trinity College sees the finishing of my Lenten installation in the dining room – a progressive installation where I’ve daily been putting up photographs of bulbs growing, both day and night. As always with Lent, it’s symbolic of a journey, and in this case it’s been a journey that has led through […]

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A visual theology of the Kingdom

When I gave out 25 disposable cameras to the Trinity College community in the autumn of 2014, I had every thought that I’d need to work a pronounced visual transformation in the results. But the messy, humorous, half-in-half-out, blurred faces and limbs in fact turned out to be the corporeal truth of this place. There

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The Kingdom behind the scenes

This week at Trinity I unveiled my recent work of 4 pieces reflecting the College’s theme of ‘Live like the Kingdom is near’. My Kingdom series were the result of 25 disposable cameras which I had let loose amongst community groups such as the part-time students, the support staff and the College nursery, along with

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Let there be light!

Coming up in the middle of June, I will be presenting a paper at the ‘Rethinking Early Photography’ conference in Lincoln. Below is my abstract for Let There Be Light: Theology and Spirituality in Early Photography: Largely absent from discourses on the development and context of early photography is an examination of the religious and

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Finding Freedom in Bristol

NOTEBOOK SPOTLIGHT: Finding Freedom Originally produced for the Corner Art Prize 2001, where this piece won First Prize. Held at Church on the Corner in Islington, London, the competition asked for visual or sculptural responses to the following Bible passage, Matthew 6: 19-21: Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust

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In the belly of the whale

I like the moment when Jonah goes ‘off-grid’ in the belly of the whale – a sort of drowning that actually ends up being a complete transformation, because, of all places, God shows up. It’s a vivid story, which I’ve always loved because Jonah decided to go off-grid on his own terms in the first

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Seeing ‘The Heart of Things’

Prompted by Trinity College’s Quiet Day, on Wednesday I visited an exhibition of Paul Hobbs’ work in St John’s Northgate, Gloucester (The Heart of Things is on until 21st November). Together, the exhibition and the pilgrimage afforded a stretching of perception into something more contemplative, even passive – which is actually a significant part of

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Everyone’s in my camera club

Today I launched my residential project here at Trinity College. In the tradition of Kodak’s ‘You Press the Button, We Do the Rest!’, I have invited people to press some buttons, and in the spirit of Dave Gorman’s ‘Modern Life is Goodish’, I will later attempt to recover the found film and bring some kind

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Is there an eagle in this class?

A beckoning space just outside Trinity College’s library prompted an invitation from librarian Su to bring something to the walls. Since I’m a library fan, having worked in my share of Bristol libraries and been a student in most of them too, it had to be book related. But there are books, and then there

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