Ecclesiart is an online project that raises awareness of significant works of modern and contemporary art since 1920 in UK churches and cathedrals.

The selected works represent the diversity of high quality church commissions and reflect developments in artistic practice and ecclesiastical art and design. You can explore the collection using the tiles below or by using the Ecclesiart map.

We seek to encourage increased responsibility towards works which may be under-appreciated or at risk and hope that this selection of works provides inspiring and challenging examples of art in churches useful to any parish or individual wishing to commission a new work.

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We welcome nominations of new works to be added to Ecclesiart. Please email us with a short text about why you think a work of art should be included with a short theological reflection on the work and its context (no longer than 150 words) and if possible please include images. Please note that we do not accept nominations from artists for their own work.

All permanent works shortlisted for the Award for Art in a Religious Context are added to Ecclesiart. For all other nominations, the Director and trustees of Art and Christianity reserve the right to select works which they determine as meeting the criteria of aptness to context, artistic and technical merit and appropriate theological meaning.

 

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William Mitchell: Stations of the Cross

The architectural sculptor William Mitchell was commissioned to make the Stations of the Cross for the new Clifton Cathedral, built 1969–73 to designs by Ronald Weeks in close collaboration with clergy and theological advisors. The concrete church, almost entirely monochrome and undecorated, is notable for the success of its integration of the ideas of the liturgical reform movements of the twentieth century, and its expression of the principles of the Second Vatican Council – a ‘sermon in concrete’, in the words of Nikolaus Pevsner. 

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Eric Newton: Sanctuary mosaic scheme

Intended to resemble the Hagia Sophia, with a monumental concrete dome, the neo-Byzantine St John the Baptist church was built in 1927. The interior is dominated by a magnificent mosaic scheme which covers the sanctuary apse, designed by the art critic and artist Eric Newton for Ludwig Oppenheimer Ltd., a mosaic firm set up by his grandfather. The scheme, which took a year to build, draws on Newton’s considerable knowledge of art history and his study of early Christian mosaics, although there are echoes too of more recent religious art, such as the prints of William Blake. It depicts Christ the King in the central semi-dome, surrounded by the four Evangelists, with processions of angels bearing wreaths and the apostles as sheep in tiers below. Behind the altar is a shimmering expanse of gold, shot through with finely patterned vertical lines. To each side are scenes from the life of John the Baptist – Christ’s Baptism and John’s beheading. The deep arch connects the human congregation of the nave to the eternal life within – four saints are depicted, Jerusalem, Noah’s ark, the Bishop of Salford’s coat of arms. Here are some of the most dramatic parts of the scheme: to the right, a blue-black winged Satan casts the damned into Hell, and above, angels blowing horns frame an enormous, explosive star. No part of the scheme lacks detail and imagination: robes, wings, edges all boast rich patterning; behind the tearing of the veil, an olive tree bends in the storm.

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Hans Feibusch: Ascension

Hans Feibusch, a Jewish artist who fled Germany in 1933, became the most prolific muralist in the history of the Church of England. Through his relationship with George Bell, the Bishop of Chicester, he created murals for many churches, often those built or restored after the war. His murals combine the palettes, techniques and forms of European Modernism – Expressionism and Cubism – with those of the early Italian Renaissance, while speaking to the spiritual concerns of the post-war church. Feibusch saw his work as essentially collaborative – not only with his assistant, Phyllis Bray, and the architect, but also with the worshipping congregation. ‘A work of art in church is there to help the worshipper, to lead their thoughts from the tumultuous outer world towards an inner spiritual one.’ (Hans Feibusch, ‘Mural Painting in Churches’, Studio, 1954)

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Craigie Aitchison: Calvary

Craigie Aitchison’s four Calvary panels for Truro Cathedral sit behind the altar in St Margaret’s Chapel. Bands of luminous colour – magenta, purple, emerald green – form the background, a simplified landscape. The first three panels are composed symmetrically. The two thieves slump on their crosses, one arm draped elastically over the cross-piece, each turned towards the central figure of Christ, who is depicted with his head raised and features cautious but peaceful. A ray of yellow light splits the deep pink sky in which a single star shines, while the Holy Spirit descends as two white lines. There are no human witnesses to the scene; instead, a black dog gazes up at Christ and a blue bird perches next to his shortened arm. The fourth panel shows, in the place of the Cross, a white, stunted tree, its single branch in bud. It is illuminated by a bright white orb – the moon, or perhaps the star from the second panel, grown larger . Aitchison has said of his repeated depictions of the Passion, ‘it is a horrific story, and I think more worth trying to say something about than anything that’s happened since.’ Here the horror is transformed into a strange and tentative hope.

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Theo Moorman: Altar frontal

Theo Moorman’s woven frontal was made initially for a side chapel at Gloucester Cathedral but was relocated to the small Norman church of St Mary, Syde, when the Thomas Denny windows were installed. Despite not being made for the church, the frontal suits its new home. The abstract composition suggests a ray of light shining out from the centre of the altar, infusing a landscape of blues with a soft yellow-gold light. The palette seems to gesture towards the church’s dedication, and echoes the Virgin’s robes in the modern window above, as if developing the symmetrical folds and strictly alternating green-gold pattern of the glass, as well as the simple floor paving, in its own, looser and yet rigorous way. The arrangement of colours and deviations from complete symmetry appear to follow a deeper logic that the weaving, as a work not just of craftsmanship but of art, makes visible.

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Julian Phelps Allan: Baptistry relief

Sutton Baptist Church was the architect N. F. Cachemaille-Day’s only known non-conformist commission; with its imposing, fortress-like brick exterior and spacious interior it is referred to informally as the ‘Baptist Cathedral’. The interior echoes the churches of German Expressionism with full height pointed arches. The architectural and liturgical centre of the church is the baptistery, against the east wall, with a pool of Hopton Wood stone and a brick reredos under a large window by Christopher Webb of scenes from Pilgrim’s Progress. Presiding over the pool, framed by two dramatic twisted brick columns, is Julian Phelps Allan’s sculpted relief depicting the Baptism of the Ethiopian.

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Victoria Rance: Comforter

St Laurence Church, Catford, is a notable octagonal church built by Ralph Covell in 1968. The east wall behind the freestanding altar presented a problem that for several decades remained unsolved. A plain cloth screen covering the organ pipes formed an unsatisfactory backdrop to the sanctuary, despite an illuminated dalles de verre cross in its centre. The space ‘was an empty vacuum – not even a positive absence – a negative space demanding to be filled’, as Charles Pickstone, the current vicar, has put it. Victoria Rance, an artist based in nearby Deptford, was commissioned in 2008 to produce a work that would solve this problem, with enough visual force to fill and unite the space without distracting from the altar and sanctuary.

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F X Velarde and Herbert Tyson Smith: Baptismal font

The opening of English Martyrs RC church in 1953 marked the completion of F X Velarde’s (1897–1960) most ambitious post-war building. An expressionist brick basilica filled with colour and decorative elements; not added but embedded as intrinsic aspects of the architecture. As with all Velarde’s churches the detail was tightly controlled, work with artists being a collaboration. The most successful and longest of these collaborations was with the sculptor Herbert Tyson Smith (1883–1972).

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Christopher Le Brun: Desert Window

The Desert Window was commissioned in 2014 for the LSE’s new Faith Centre, an interfaith worship space as well as a centre for rigorous interreligious dialogue, research and training. The window’s subject points to the significance of the desert both as a place of spiritual intensity for many religions, and as a place of ‘inter-religious encounter’, in the words of the chaplain, the Revd Dr James Walters. The window thus expresses the role of the Faith Centre as a ‘place of stillness for all people, where different religious groups can “set up camp” for a while, but also a place to encounter people of other faiths, to hear their stories and to share hospitality.’

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Kate Egawa: Black Madonna and Child of Covid-19 Lockdown

The project for the ‘Black Madonna and Child of Covid-19 Lockdown’ (Our Lady of Kilburn) arose from the community’s experience during COVID lockdown. St Mary’s is a Black majority congregation, with most being women of working age. Many were aware of significant racial and gender differences in the effects COVID had.

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John Hayward: Interior murals

The murals at St Michael and All Angels were among the first works to be created by Hayward after he established himself as a freelance artist in 1961. Their blues, greens and golds were to become characteristic of Hayward’s stained glass for which he became famous in later years. The murals use the marouflage technique: the images are painted in the artist’s studio and then cut out and glued to the wall of the church. Each was designed specifically for the space it was to occupy. When they were installed in 1962, they were said to be the largest modern set of murals anywhere in the world.

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