The Faith Museum is a new museum dedicated to telling the history of faith in the UK. It is part of the Auckland Project: an inspiring regeneration initiative in which the former mining town of Bishop Auckland in County Durham has been transformed into an incredible art destination. The museum explores the myriad ways in which faith has shaped lives and communities across Britain, inviting visitors to consider how people across history have encountered faith. I’m so delighted that a large scale installation of my work, Only Through Others, is central to the space.
You can read more about the museum here:
Only Through Others is a site-specific curation of bespoke artworks produced from my broader project Encounters. This work is a portrait of twenty-first century developments in interfaith dialogue, inspired by religious leaders I’ve met across the UK. It is a visual record of the new and groundbreaking ways they have started working together to try to overcome historic divisions and find ways to publicly articulate their respect for one another without undermining the absolute truth of their own faith.
This work is also a way to reflect the religious diversity of multicultural Britain, it was incredibly important to me that this work would resonate with people who do not often see themselves or their faith represented. Each portrait represents one of the most widely practiced belief systems in the UK.
Each artwork has a bespoke patterned background that incorporates spiritually and symbolically rich imagery particular to the faith of the sitter. Great care has been taken to consider the significance of each motif, and each portrait is handmade using ancient gilding and embellishment techniques so that it is bejewelled with the history, faith and culture it represents. Whilst much of the iconography is culturally specific, when viewed together portraits tell the story of our interwoven heritage, common humanity and shared visual language.
Alongside the portraits, I also curated a vitrine of previously unseen materials that inspired the portrait, including: research, photographs, artefacts, sketches and letters and gifts I have received from religious leaders.
