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Video artist to install plasma TV altarpieces in St Paul's
Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent8 Jul 2009
St Paul's Cathedral has commissioned pioneering video artist Bill Viola to make multiple plasma screen installations for two new altarpieces.
Viola, 58, whose own faith stems in part from a near-death experience when he was saved from drowning as a child, will create the altarpieces on the themes of Mary and martyrs.
It is the first permanent commission of video art in a British cathedral. It will be installed by 2011 at the end of the Quire aisles, flanking the High Altar and American Memorial Chapel.
Viola, who has worked in Durham Cathedral and other churches before, said he felt incredibly special to be chosen to work in St Paul's. And he praised the role churches play in modern society.
"A church is a place for reflection and contemplation. When I'm doing a project in a city, I'll very often step off in a church at midday for a while to meditate. I think it represents a quiet time where you can contemplate something larger than yourself in solitude and silence and I think that is desperately needed these days."
He was raised an Episcopalian in America but has embraced faiths including Zen Buddhism and Islamic Sufism in his work.
He intends to make the Mary altarpiece cinematic but said: "I'm not going to have a woman in a blue robe riding on a donkey with an old man." And he intends to reclaim the word "martyr" - which originally meant "witness" - from association with Middle Eastern terrorism.
Canon Martin Warner, treasurer of St Paul's, said the works were "expected to add to the devotional and reflective experience of visitors to St Paul's".
Reader views (1)
This is a really good idea as TV's are a great way to get your view across, loads of people would watch it, well i would anyway
- Tom Smith, Bolton, UK, 21/07/2009 10:50
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