Slipping the Veil @ St Bartholomew the Great
People often assume curating is easy because — and this is a vast oversimplification — almost anything looks good when hung in a white walled gallery space. That’s why they’re so prevalent. Some curators, however, like a challenge. Such as hanging contemporary art inside a 901 year-old church that some claim is not just an architectural artefact but a living entity. Featuring painting, sculpture, a flashing red LED display board and a Seven Psalms soundtrack (Nick Cave’s lockdown album), Slipping the Veil is a contemporary reminder that some of the boldest steps forward can’t be taken without a compassionate reckoning with the past.
The hang is structured to provide visitors with a station to station journey not unlike a stations of the cross processional route. Don’t worry if you’re not Christian and/or don’t know what that means. Just walk in and follow the art anti-clockwise around the church, though you might need to cross-reference the handy map. Many of the works are so well paired with the atmospheric nooks and crannies of the medieval space that one long-time mass attendee commented that she can’t believe she hadn’t noticed Carolein Smit’s ‘Grail’ work before, assuming it had just always been there.
Juliette Losq’s ‘Fluvius’, a watercolour and ink work on a wooden screen, is easily seen as a privacy divider for the smaller, back alter. Maxim Burnett’s 3-metre tall, gilded framed ‘The Last Breath’ looks like a Sunday school parable brought to life as a stern visible reminder for the parishioners. Elena Unger’s four paintings of crumbling castles blend in so seamlessly with the distressed and time-worn elements of the venue that you’d be forgiven for assuming they are St Barts portraits and not imagined fantasy.
Unger has been artist-in-residence at St. Barts for three years and she eagerly shares that “This building has haunted me. It’s the place that I go in my head when I create my work. I can’t escape this building.” This is her second “love letter to the church” exhibition and this time she’s enlisted gallerist James Freeman to co-curate.
Freeman was a natural choice. He’s run an eponymous gallery in Islington for 20 years under a banner he calls Contemporary Historicism. “Something that I invented,” he says proudly, though he’s referring to the term, not the artistic practice of combining contemporary art tendencies with art-historical references and research. Anyone who’s seen a show at his gallery knows he has a knack for finding works that seamlessly speak to both the old and the new, so it’s no surprise that more than few items in this show had to be specifically pointed out to the press attendees.
The idea of contemporary art in a historic religious venue triggers memories of my grandmother sternly telling me off in church — “Shush, you’re in God’s house!” — but the artworks that stick out do so loudly but respectfully. Anne von Freyburg’s repurposed rococo paintings are a riot of colourful textiles. Claire Curneen’s glazed terracotta ‘Painted Tree’ looks like it uprooted itself from the exterior garden and has come inside seeking sanctuary on the windowsill. Kate McDonnell’s ‘Twisted’, a moss-like mass of paper, looks like the cleaners stopped doing their job back in the 1700s but you’ll gain new appreciation for this piece once you learn it’s hiding wall stained ‘tears’ from the weeping tomb.
Thanks to careful curation and sublime lighting everything in the show is given the same kind of ethereal, heightened importance you might attribute to the religious imagery and artefacts located right next to them. Quite simply, it was a joy to see such strange art seamlessly blend in with the somber and serious venue without being blasphemous.
Plan your visit
‘Slipping the Veil’ runs until 14 June 2025.
Visit greatstbarts.com for more info about the venue.
Visit slippingtheveil.com for more info about the show, the artists and the curators.
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