By Lianne Kolirin
Artists have long relied on models, friends and lovers for inspiration.
What sparks Elena Unger’s creative fire, however, is a hidden 900-year-old church at the heart of the City of London. “It’s my muse,” said the Canadian artist of St Bartholomew the Great, which is hosting a year of celebratory events to mark its major anniversary.
Among them is Eleven Twenty-Three, an upcoming contemporary exhibition hosted by Ms Unger, who has been the church’s artist-in-residence since she first approached the rector, Marcus Walker, about establishing the post five years ago.
“I feel this weird communion with the place — I’m sort of in love with St Barts,” she told the Religion Media Centre.
The church stands on the same plot as Bart’s Hospital. What makes the site even more incredible is that while many renovations have been undertaken over the years, the church escaped unscathed from the devastation of both the Great Fire of the London and the Blitz.
The multi-sensory contemporary exhibition of emerging and established artists brings together 25 artistic installations from a multitude of disciplines and media, including sculpture, sound, painting, textiles, aromatic work, and more.
Ms Unger arrived in London from her home city of Vancouver seven years ago for a foundation course at Central Saint Martins, before moving on to a degree at Goldsmiths, University of London. It was during that time that she first came across the church.
“My first impression was that I’d stepped beyond time,” she said. “Timelessness is too weak a word really — it’s like you’re actually stepping beyond time itself, but then you’re also at the centre of it and you can feel like you’re wrapped in history at the same time.”
Ms Unger says she comes from a Jewish and Zorastrian background, but with a lifelong interest in philosophy that then became an interest in theology.
So drawn was she to the church that she was eventually confirmed and baptised by the previous rector, who also encouraged her to take her interest further.
“So, then I went to Cambridge and I studied philosophical theology for an MPhil. My art has always had philosophical and theological underpinnings and it’s really intrinsic to the work,” she says.
“I’ve always been really taken by ancient places, but St Bart’s feels like it’s even more than that. It’s certainly not the oldest place in the world — you go to Rome and things are much, much, much older, or Jerusalem, but this feels like the oldest place in the world to me in a really odd way. I think that’s because it’s this purpose-made vessel for liturgy and the purpose of liturgy is to unite the infinite with the temporal, with time, and that’s what St Bart’s does and that’s also what art is meant to do.”
The exhibition, curated with fellow London artist Heidi Pearce, is her “love letter” to St Bart’s, which she says “brings the experience of the infinite into the present”.
The varied range of artworks will be spread throughout the body of the church over two weeks from 20 April, inviting visitors to explore the church’s many different areas and eras. “Not all of the art in this exhibition comes from a religious background, it’s all very contemporary,” she says. “But it’s all coming from this place of time, space, liturgy and how they interact.”
The featured artists are from all over the world, including China, Canada and Iran, and most of the pieces have been commissioned for the occasion. Among them are works created from stained glass, incense and acrylic nails.
“I think that art and religion are so integral to each other and I think that religious art for a point was in a stagnant period so what I guess I’m trying to do, in a small way, is bring religious art into the contemporary sphere,” she says. “I want St Barts to be at the forefront of that because it’s such a perfect church for art.”
