ACE organises lectures, study days, conferences, workshops and retreats. These have taken place both in the UK and internationally in partnership a wide variety of groups and individuals.
EDUCATION
Art and Theology Summer School
Following extensive research into visual arts education in theological colleges, ACE provided a successful study week on art and theology for students at Ripon College, Cuddesdon in May 2011. ACE will be running it again in 2012. For details of the programme please contact the ACE office.
ACE events
ACE and the Three Faiths Forum
For the second year running, the Three Faiths Forum together with the ACE, JCC for London and Maslaha delivered a vibrant contemporary arts festival celebrating intercultural friendship during National Interfaith Week 21 Nov – 5 Dec 2011.
Over the past year, artists from different backgrounds have been collaborating on visual art projects, creating works that explore faith relations and how people from different communities can bring about social change. This provided the stimulus and backdrop for two weeks of events including workshops, seminars, women-only days, school linking days, and social action events.
Collaborating artists:
Soraya Syed Sanders, Francesca Ulivari, Orly Orbach, Edward Johansson Mukhtar Sanders, Hannah ‘Habibi’ Hopkin, Emer Costello, Mo Negm, Camilla Howalt
Curated by Victoria Burgher
For more details contact Paul Bayley, ACE’s Director of Projects.
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Victoria Burgher Love thy neighbour … 2009
Previous ACE events
Liverpool Cathedral, Thursday 9 December 2010, 6.30-8.30pm
A reception open to all to mark the Award given to Liverpool Cathedral for their commission by Tracey Emin.
And to launch the publication Contemporary art in British churches.
Concert Room, Liverpool Cathedral, St James' Mount.
The Challenge of the Permanent Commission, Tuesday 16 November 2010, 6.30pm
A panel discussion between contemporary artists and 'commissioners'
The panel includes artists Mark Cazalet, Iain McKillop and Victoria Rance and Director of Modus Operandi, Vivien Lovell, Revd Canon Anthony Cane from Chichester Cathedral.
In the chair, Paul Bayley, Art in Churches Officer for Art and Christianity Enquiry.
Prof Mia M Mochizuki, Friday 19 November 2010, 6pm
Winner of the 2009 ACE/Mercers’ International Book Award for 'The Netherlandish Image after Iconoclasm, 1566-1672; Material Religion in the Dutch Golden Age' (Ashgate, 2008), Dr Mochizuki will consider the legacy of iconoclasm for the image. By taking the long view of cast off or 'thrown away' objects and the objects they stimulated she will explore the rhetorical performance of doubt that iconoclasm interjected into the realm of the visual and what this anxiety offers the criticism of the material manifestations of belief.
The Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre
The Courtauld Institute of Art, Strand, London WC2
Interfaith Arts Festival, November 2010
The Three Faiths Forum hosted a vibrant contemporary arts festival celebrating inter-cultural friendship and collaboration. Bringing together a wide range of both interfaith and single faith organisations, and featuring everything from an exciting opening night with live music and performances to workshops and dialogue during the week, the festival at Candid Arts Gallery in Angel was part of National Interfaith Week 2010.
Candid Arts, 3 Torrens St, London EC1V 1NQ
Icons of the absence of God: An ACE/King's College symposium on Rothko and spirituality
24 January 2009, 10am-5pm
Does Rothko offer consolation to a godless world? Where lies the enigma of Rothko’s paintings?
To coincide with a major exhibition of Mark Rothko’s work at Tate Modern, this symposium critically reviewed different interpretations of these works, and how they speak to their social and cultural context, from the perspectives of cultural history, neuro-science, art history and theology.
Chaired by Ben Quash, Professor of Christianity and the Arts, KCL.
King’s College, Strand, London WC2
Click on papers below to download a pdf
Morning session:
Afternoon session:
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Daniel Glaser: Can neurobiology tell you how you feel about a picture? (unavailable)
Aaron Rosen is post-doctoral research fellow at the Institute of Israel and Jewish Studies, Columbia University and author of the forthcoming title Imagining Jewish Art: Encounters with the Masters in Chagall, Guston, and Kitaj (Legenda, 2009).
Jonathan Harris is Professor of Art History, School of Architecture, University of Liverpool and author of Writing Back to Modern Art: After Greenberg, Fried and Clark (Routledge, 2005).
Daniel Glaser is a neurobiologist and Head of Special Projects in public engagement at the Wellcome Trust.
George Pattison is Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford University; author of Art, Modernity and Faith (SCM Press, 1998).
ACE Awards events 2008
Stephen Cox in conversation with Robert Willis (Dean of Canterbury), Stephen Bann (Professor of Art History at the University of Bristol) and Christopher Irvine (Canon Librarian at Canterbury Cathedral). 12 Sep, 7.30pm at the ISC, Canterbury Cathedral. Read a transcript in issue 56 of 'Art and Christianity'.
Rose Finn-Kelcey discussed her work and the award-winning installation Angel with ACE's art in churches officer Paul Bayley. Ellard and Johnstone also presented a film work. 25 Sep, 6.30pm at St Paul's Bow Common, London E3.
Book award winner Jules Lubbock gave an illustrated lecture on Stories of Justice in 14th-Century Art. 20 Oct, 6pm at the Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Strand, London WC2.
Peter Doll (Team Vicar of Abingdon) and Peter Newby (Priest of St Mary Moorfields, London) on Building a temple for the third millennium; new directions in church architecture. 25 Oct, 2.30pm at St Bede's Basingstoke.
2007 CONFERENCE: Art, Faiths and Culture — Convergence and Conflict
Our biennial conference was held last year at Trinity Hall in Cambridge, 2 — 6 July.
The conference theme was chosen with a view to identifying those other major religious traditions worldwide whose aesthetic theologies and practices have much to offer our own western Christian tradition, and whose very presence enjoins us to venture beyond ACE's customary confessional boundaries. The theme is, we hope, broad enough to invite an interfaith response yet also specific enough to encourage personal contributions that are explicitly appropriate to it. Hence the conference is open to those from all faiths or none, and to those whose contributions may focus on the historically specific or the essentially contemporary, upon aesthetic theory or practice, and upon the non-visual as well as the visual arts.
The conference programme included contributions from Duncan Robinson (Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum), Edmund de Waal and Eamon Duffy; an interfaith forum; visits to Ely Cathedral and the Henry Moore Foundation; and an evening reception at Kettle's Yard.
A full report of conference papers was published in no 52 (Oct 07) of 'Art and Christianity'. Download the pdf here.
The 10th conference will take place in Strasbourg, France on 6-10 July 2009. Initial enquiries should be made to Inge Linder-Gaillard via ACE.
Faith and Architecture in a multi-faith world
13 March 2007, Ladywood ARC, Birmingham
A seminar exploring Buddhist, Christian, Jewish and Muslim places of worship, and buildings that are shared by people of different faiths.
Morning Session: Religious buildings in Ladywood; new build for 4 different faith communities
Afternoon session: Under one roof; tackling the challenge of multi-faith buildings
See issue no 50 (Apr 07) of ‘Art & Christianity’ for a report.
Supported by the Home Office and the John S Cohen Foundation.
Velázquez and Religion
9 December at the National Gallery 2006, London
The session was introduced by Dawson Carr, curator of Velázquez and speakers included David Jasper from the Dept of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Glasgow, Sara Nalle from William Paterson University, New Jersey and Ronald Truman, Christchurch, Oxford.
Abstraction and figuration in Religious Art,
20 August 2006 at the City Art Centre, Edinburgh
This event marked the success of Still by Alison Watt, the painting that won the ACE Art Award 2005/6. Prof David Jasper gave a paper on the above theme.
ACE STUDY DAY: Art, Religion and Community — an interfaith perspective
1 May 2006 at the National Portrait Gallery
How do the Abrahamic faiths use art and architecture to create a sense of identity? What are their distinct features, and where are they similar? Can their art and architecture foster a sense of belonging today? How do contemporary artists use (and abuse) religious themes?
Speakers: Rachel Garfield has a PhD on contemporary Jewish identity in the visual arts in Britain. She is herself an artist currently making interview-based work that explores the cultural narratives of Jewish people in the community.
Thalia Kennedy is a lecturer and writer who focuses on the architecture of the Islamic world. She recently completed her PhD in which she explored issues of identity and religion through the buildings of medieval South Asia.
Charles Pickstone is an Anglican parish priest who is also a writer and art critic, with a particular interest in the ways that Christian communities use art to develop their theology and in the use that secular artists make of Christian themes.
See our listings page for exhibitions and events.