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.
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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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.’
Nicholas Mynheer and Roger Wagner: Enhancements to St Mary’s (aumbry, window, font cover)
Nicholas Mynheer (b. 1958) and Roger Wagner (b. 1957) were commissioned to contribute to the enhancements programme at St Mary’s, Iffley, a Romanesque parish church in east Oxford.
Antony Gormley: Transport
‘Antony Gormley’s Transport in Canterbury is a large and striking human figure, created from iron nails formerly in the roof of the Cathedral. It is suspended three metres above the floor of the site of the first burial place of St Thomas Becket in the Eastern Crypt. [...] This is a beautifully made and very clever piece of work which impresses by its technical accomplishment’ (The Very Revd Nicholas Frayling, Chair of the judging panel for the ACE Award for Art in a Religious Context, 2011).
Thomas Denny: Transfiguration Window
This work 'was created in honour of Bishop Michael Ramsey, and intended to reflect his theological interests, in particular his fascination with the Transfiguration of Christ... The window is in the South Quire Aisle and is 16x16m in size. This window is technically very assured and of high quality. Its location means that it can only really be seen at close quarters, and it is indeed very detailed in its depiction of biblical images.’
Maggi Hambling: The Winchester Tapestries
Created by Maggi Hambling for the High Altar at Winchester Cathedral, these tapestries, the artist’s first, were dedicated on 7 July 2013. Maggi Hambling collaborated with Ateliers Pinton – a French tapestry workshop in the Aubusson region which has worked with artists such as Picasso, Miro, Leger and Sutherland (for Coventry).
Antonia Hockton: The River of Life reredos
Antonia Hockton's River of Life reredos at St Georges, Great Bromley, Essex adds greatly to the way the altar in the side chapel works. This was just what a parish church should be doing: engaging a local artist who explores the context and makee something new that flows into the altar and on to those who worship there, and although it may have seemed a lot to the parish, it was achieved relatively inexpensively.
Stephen Owen: Communion table and lectern
Winner of the A+C Art Award for a permanent commission, Stephen Owen’s carved communion table and lectern are powerful symbolic pieces of liturgical furniture.
Laurence Edwards: Beast of Burden
Behind the altar table in Holy Trinity Church in Blythburgh, Suffolk, is a powerful altarpiece by Laurence Edwards. Cast in bronze from the mud, wood and hogweed that can be found all around the Suffolk locality, Edward’s sculpture brings the precise beauty of the outside marsh into the church in a way that combines imagination, emotion and spirit.
Anne Vibeke Mou: Window for St John’s, Healey
A highly detailed yet monochrome window depicting billowing clouds. This work was joint winner, along with James Hugonin's window for the same church, of the 2011 ACE award for art in a religious context.
Rebecca Hind: Scintilla: the glittering speck
"Scintilla is a visual orchestration of life, made to echo inside the tall paleness of Christ Church Spitalfields. An evocation of landscape and elements that wants to summon the potent majesty of natures shifting energy to the core of Hawkesmoor’s poised linear order."
Nominated by Brian Catling
Nicholas Mynheer: Resurrection Altar
The altar that stands solidly as the ‘centre-point’ in the Resurrection Chapel around which the Community of the Resurrection and its guests gather on most days for the celebration of the Eucharist was designed and sculpted by Nicholas Mynheer.
James Dougall: Hanging Pyx
Hanging Pyx was finished and installed in 2011. It is constructed from fabricated Gilding Metal and nickel plated hot forged copper. The whole piece is 96 cm high and hangs 5 feet above the altar in the Lady Chapel at Holy Trinity. It works on a rise and fall mechanism located 8 metres up in the eaves of the roof, utilising 50 metres of 1.5 mm diameter stainless steel cabling.
Bill Viola and Kira Perov: Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water)
Intensely theological it addressed big issues of the day and asked questions of us about meaning, life, death and what we would give our lives for.
Graeme Mortimer Evelyn: Reconciliation Reredos
Reconciliation Reredos is a contemporary artwork of universal reconciliation, that responds to the church’s past, reflects the voices of the city today, while representing the potential of the future.
Susanna Heron: Still Point
Still Point is a meditative spatial work incorporated into the cathedral grounds. It has three associated parts: a stone element, a poem and a song.
Charles Gurrey: A Tribute to Wilfred Owen
In 2014, Ripon Cathedral acquired an installation acknowledging the Great War. ‘A Tribute to Wilfred Owen’ by Charles Gurrey is set on the wall above the altar in the chapel of Peace and Justice at the west end of the north aisle of the nave in the position of a reredos.