Exhibition
The Treecreeper and the Wryneck
25 Sep 2007 – 28 Oct 2007
Event times
Tues-Fri:10am-4pm
Sun: 10am-1pm
Cost of entry
Free
Address
- Lower Thames Street
- London
- EC3R 6DN
- United Kingdom
About
The Treecreeper and the Wryneck consists of a group of pencil drawings made directly from photographs of the crucifix situated above the altar of Saint Magnus the Martyr, London EC3R. The drawings will be installed around the nave of the church.The exhibition confronts the crucifix by displaying the representation (which is inclined to archive) within 'reach' of the represented (which is inclined to decay). The crucifix is characterized by a unique relation between its form and what it refers to. Saint Basil the Great wrote: 'the honour given the image passes to the prototype'. The availability of the image of the Son (or the more purified sacrificial cross) endlessly reiterates the unavailability of the Father.
The crucifix has a twofold referent evading comprehension. It represents a founding event that is empirically unobservable and also depicts a hypostatic image, with an accurate knowledge of anatomical and physical attributes, that metonymically symbolises an 'incommensurable and uncircumscribable' thing (St. John Damascene).
The crucifix represents a kind of cartulary that engenders a hermeneutic problem. It is itself an interpretation. As an image (its only manifestation in fact) it adds-to and re-describes vicariously a manifold accumulation of other heterogeneous interpretations.
The exhibition poses the question: do these additional drawings remain renditions within the context of art or do they become genuine crucifixes, intermediary objects situated between impotent Man and omnipotent God, available themselves to be in receipt of veneration? Or to put it more simply are they sacred or profane?
