Pilgrimage - Walking to Heaven

About

St John on Bethnal Green brings together four artists under the theme ‘Pilgrimage — Walking to Heaven' in this Sir John Soane designed grade-one listed church. Entering the forecourt visitors will be able to experience Rebecca Feiner's work ‘If dreams reflect the past, hope summons the future', her interfaith and secular response to Jerusalem's Wailing Wall. It provides a chance to be part of a different pilgrimage, where there is no separation of faiths but a place to contemplate, remember, forget, meditate, celebrate and hope. Moving into the vestibule, Feiner's second piece ‘Incorporeal Consciousness' dramatically unfurls from on high, as its rich colour shimmers and flutters to the floor, embracing representation of the spiritual without religious boundaries. Taking up discreet spaces in the vestibule Pauline Thomas' piece ‘Devotional Journeys' weaves together the flight of birds through different religious texts. Brought into unison within this sacred space, the work reflects on migration as a pilgrimage and contemplates the strong interconnections between all faiths and cultures. May Ayres' powerful ceramic sculptures ‘Winning Hearts and Minds' and ‘Proconsul' ask the visitor to walk with the victims of empire, mostly unnamed and unknown. Moving upstairs to the North Gallery, drawings of the work in progress will give visitors a unique insight into the artist's own creative journey. The Belfry hosts Arabella Lee's ‘Unhallowed', where projected images tell of children's burial grounds in a specific landscape in Ireland, unmarked but for a few stones. The journey these images make, from such remote areas to consecrated ground reflects on a trapped state and tries to capture the loss implicit in those sites.