christological contruction:  dogma

raku-fired ceramics

(the text in the centre section is taken from Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics)

christological construction:  postmodernism

raku-fired ceramics

 

(the symbols of each section are taken from a variety of relgious and pagan sources - the center is left open)

 

christological construction:        feminism 

raku-fired ceramics

(biblical text has been applied to the figure and the 'cross' is contructed from chicken-wire, a mateial that can be easily reshaped, as in the detail below)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Artist Statement

 

The works in this exhibition are related to research undertaken for my Master of Theological Studies thesis. In that work I focus on 'the artist as theologian', exploring the role of art in various theological contexts.

 

While some of the works in this exhibit may be considered beautiful, my fundamental motivation is not aesthetic but intellectual - I am interested in artistic inquiry into the Christian religion. Neither have these images been created for devotion or spiritual edification; they represent investigations into some of the challenges experienced by contemporary Christianity.

 

Adopting the conceptually-based practice of incorporating text into visual art, I have used pages torn from various Christian Bibles to highlight differences between literal and metaphorical approaches to Scripture. In other works I incorporate traditional Christian iconography along with handwritten text copied from the Bible and other historical sources (such documents written by Theodore of Studios [729-856] and Karl Barth [1886-1968]), to represent the tension between orthodox and postmodern approaches to contemporary Christianity.